House's Plan 9 For The Walking Dead
by Herr D
Summary: Could House SOLVE TWD? TWD starts after House ended, obviously. What would House and Wilson do in TWD? How would Darryl act on the periphery of a feud between House and Negan? Who ELSE might be involved? Spoilers for House, none for 2017 fall season of TWD, some for before that. Rating for: L,V close to the degree of TWD, L on level of House, Negan.
1. Captive Shared On Negan-House War

_**THE ZOMBIES MENTIONED HERE, AS WELL AS STEPH, DOZER, FITZ, OAK, VIPER, DOOBY, BEN, VARIOUS BIKER EXTRAS, PETE, ANN, ANN G, AND MARY ARE MY OWN CREATIONS BASED ON TWD AND HOUSE M.D. , WHICH I HAVE NO RIGHTS TO. I ALSO HAVE NO RIGHTS TO THE CHARACTER THE MASKED MAN IS BASED ON. FURTHER, AS TO THE PRODUCTS MENTIONED BY NAME, LIKE: PURELL, MILLER, NISSAN, VICODIN, ETC. I HAVE NO RIGHTS TO, NOR AM I A PAID ADVERTISER FOR THEM. The Darryl events take place between Darryl's first stay at the Kingdom and his reunion with Carol. They do not affect the rest of his timeline, so should be imagined as 'deleted Darryl scenes on his way from point to point in the TWD narrative.' The rest of the events happen after the show 'House, M.D.' and have their own timeline, so nothing is changed from the shows unless I've made a mistake. (Please point out in reviews, providing any references you can.) I did not watch every House episode. Several incidental House spoilers and subtle in-jokes for TWD. The masked man is a well-known character (not mine) transitioning into a changing role in a changed world. Hopefully the surprise ending will be the best kind of surprise.**_

CAPTIVE SHARED ON NEGAN-HOUSE WAR

Darryl had a funny taste in his mouth. His eyelids felt heavy. His wrists—he startled awake. Still sluggish, he tugged gently at his bonds.

"You ain't gettin' outta that. That's plastic ties."

"Voice is hick—Carolinas?" Darryl thought. Darryl turned his head to the left and squinted through the dim light at a figure bound as he was to a seat in the same row. "Movies?" he muttered. They were seated in the front row of a small movie theater, just two yards from the curtain, and the floor was sticky under his shoes. He felt around, discovering he couldn't reach a pocket. He started looking for sharp edges on the seat frame.

"Yeah. You're Darryl, right?"

Darryl stiffened. "Why? Who're yew?"

"Name's Pete. I made some food for you once, but they didn't give it to you. Did you see who took us?"

"Naw. Where were yew?"

"Supply run. Little strip mall we hadn't picked clean. I turned down an aisle by the fire exit and lights out. He drugged me. She?"

Darryl frowned. He dimly remembered a swirl of dark cloth. "Could've been wearing a dress. Don't know. Yeah, I's drugged too. How long we been here?"

Pete shrugged. "Prob'ly a few hours. Sun was comin' in that window pretty good when I woke up. I think I heard her leavin'. I don't think we were brought in at the same time. Where'd she take you?"

Darryl frowned. "I'd parked in a warehouse and was lookin' 'round. Came down on a rope and gassed me. Fast."

"Shit, yeah; fast! Negan's gonna be sore we disappeared. I'm already in trouble for taking more food than I's given. Thass why he had me out on supply run. I usually work the kitchen."

The fire exit at stage left opened. A man wearing a black vinyl butcher's apron, thin black clothes, a black ski mask, black leather boots, and yellow dishwashing gloves covered with gore walked in with a chair under his arm. He dropped it, and with practiced ease, kicked it open without touching it. He stepped around it and sat down. "So . . . you're awake." His voice was deep and gravelly and had an irritated edge to it. He was idly playing with the gore on the gloves.

Pete goggled at the gore. "Don't hurt us, man. I'm a good cook. I can make SKUNK taste good."

"What chew wont?" Darryl squinted at the apron to see the lower half of it was splattered with gore, too.

"I heard radio chatter some months ago about a man referred to as the Governor. Do you know of him?"

"No?" said Pete.

"He's dead," said Darryl, "He attacked our group, and we fought back. He wrecked our home, and we wrecked his."

The masked man faintly shook his head. "Mutually assured destruction. Why did he attack?"

Darryl shrugged. "He-uz nuts. Kept heads in fish tanks. Kept his dead daughter on a chain."

"Your home didn't look destroyed."

"We were livin' at a prison south a here. We joined a new group. Alexandria."

The masked man pulled off his gloves and dropped them beside the chair. He reached behind himself to the stage, reached under the curtain, and pulled out a small stack of maps. He showed Darryl one. At Darryl's nod, the masked man opened it. He pointed to each major interstate until Darryl grunted yes and nodded when he found the prison. The masked man pulled out a red highlighter and put an 'X' on the prison. "Destroyed, you say?"

"Yeah."

The masked man reached under the curtain and pulled out two abaci, kids' toys with brightly-colored beads and a cartoon clock face on each one. He pulled two beads to one side on the one with the duck and placed it in front of Darryl. He placed the other, with the pig on it, in front of Pete. "Was he actually a governor or anything?"

"Naw. He-uz worse than Negan. Kept some of his own people thinkin' he was a good guy."

Pete had startled. "Worse?"

"Yeah."

"I guess you two aren't Negan's most loyal people."

Pete snorted. "We're his LEAST loyal people. Of the ones he hasn't killed yet."

Darryl snorted. "You?"

Pete nodded. "I know you were a prisoner, and that the doctor helped you escape . . ." Darryl squinted at him in the dim light. "I watched him kill the doctor. I don't dare do anything THAT big. Open a prisoner's door? I brushed your bread and your plates with my special boullion."

Darryl squinted at him again. "What the hell is that?"

"Concentrated nutrition. Juice from the meats I cook and boiled-down vegetables. You were pretty strong leavin' right? You killed Fat Joey, right?"

Darryl said, "Yeah. Had to. What chew doin' with that?"

The masked man had moved three beads on Pete's abacus and two more on Darryl's. "Noting how helpful you can be. Tell me more about how you work against Negan."

"He doesn't trust me enough to eat without a taster. So I make his stuff and the top people's stuff less nutritious. I put more of the healthy stuff in the prisoners' food and talk about how I stay away from Negan."

"Because?"

"I tell everyone that I could get hurt if anyone tries anything on him, 'cause I'm no good in a fight. I'm tryin' to put the thought in their head that they should try somethin' by pretendin' I'm sure someone's gonna. I said that to the doctor. I prob'ly got him killed for lettin' Darryl loose."

The masked man nodded. "Probably. Do either of you know anyone who was actually in charge before the dead rose?"

"Jim on dish crew ran his own company."

The masked man cocked his head, moving three more beads on Pete's abacus and one more on Darryl's. "I mean in charge of government."

Darryl frowned. "Not living, I don't. There was a congresswoman in charge of Alexandria where my people are now. Deanna. Monroe, I think."

Pete shrugged, "Negan killed some guy who was town council near here a few months back and a town engineer when he took me. Why?"

"I'm searching for NORAD or any authority figures that survived outside it. I'd like America back on its feet." The masked man pushed over another bead for Pete and two more for Darryl.

Pete laughed. Darryl stayed quiet. The masked man turned to Pete. "What's so funny?"

"You lookin' for the jokers that let this happen in the first place? Great job THEY did."

"You don't want Negan running things. Who do you think should?" The masked man stared at Pete.

"You, man! Negan's people don't even know you're here! You got us! You could capture him and kill him and run things yourself! Let me cook for your camp, man. I don't need to be top guy. Just want to be more'n a slave."

The masked man turned to see Darryl studying the seven beads on each abacus. "Who do you think should run things, Darryl?"

Darryl looked up at him. "Rick and Maggie are the only leaders around here I really respect. No offense. All I know about chew is that you're not in it."

The masked man rose, stepped the three steps toward Pete, pulled out a small canister and sprayed something in Pete's face.

"Wait! Wh—" Pete slumped down.

The masked man sat back down. "You've been holding out on me. Were you keeping things from him or me?"

"Both! You lettin' him live?"

"I hadn't planned on killing him. You?"

"Long as he don't know anything. Can he hear us?"

The masked man reached under the stage curtain again to pull out a pair of heavy headphones and a dark blue pillowcase. He fitted the headphones onto Pete and put the pillowcase over his head. "Even if he's partially immune to the knockout gas, he can't hear us now. It's interesting to me that you could keep pace with him without saying anything about yourself. Did you lie about anything?"

"Naw. What chew wanna know?"

"In your sleep, you apologized to Carol, to Merle, to Rick, to Michonne, to Glen, to Carl, and to Judith. You mentioned bringing a squirrel to a tiger. I'd like you to explain those things to me."

"Everyone but Merle, Glen, and maybe Carol is still alive as far as I know. Glen was killed 'cause I didn't kill Negan. I let the live ones down gettin' taken. Merle was my brother."

"Why apologize to him?"

"I shoulda stood up to him more. If I'd taught him not to be an asshole all the time, he'd a seen sooner that I could get him in with the right people, maybe he wouldn't-a got killed."

The masked man nodded. "Family dynamics and general regrets. What would you hide from Pete that you would tell me?"

"Weren't no doctor's writin' on the note that told me to go. Loopy. Like a girl's."

"You got a note from this person that helped you escape."

"Yeah."

"What about the squirrel for a tiger?"

"King Ezekiel has a tiger. He runs another camp near here. I caught a live squirrel and put it in a weighted trap to let her play with her food a little."

The masked man cocked his head again and studied him for a moment. "What do you think about the American government?"

Darryl snorted. "Worst president's better alive than dead. Whatever, man. D'ruther ya kill Negan 'fore ya go." He looked at Pete, who was beginning to stir.

The masked man pulled off the pillowcase and earphones. "I won't be killing Negan. I won't do more about local politics than understand them and avoid them. I'll be releasing you both and going on to search for NORAD."

Pete snapped awake. "Crazy bum! All the American leaders were OLD! Most of 'em prob'ly dead from heart attacks in the first hour! You should kill Negan just to get Eugene!"

"Who?"

"Dr. Eugene! America can't elect a president like things are now. Eugene could make the biters stop walkin'. Then you could find whoever you like! Tell him, Darryl. Eugene came from Alexandria, too."

Darryl sat in silence for a moment. "I could work for you as a tracker for a bit. Pay me in supplies."

"What're you h—" The masked man took a deep breath, sighed, and gassed Pete again. "What?!"

"Eugene's not all that. He lied about the cure shit to us too for a little bit."

"So Negan has a major fifth column brewing." The masked man nodded.

"Not really. Eugene's a coward. Prob'ly volunteered for Negan's protection."

The masked man shook his head and smacked Pete lightly across the face. "Wake up. Even if I take Eugene from Negan, saving the world's not a one-man job. I'd need a team of doctors, and Negan's killed at least one that you told me about."

"There were two more genius doctors Negan didn't kill."

"Where?"

Pete looked blank. "Road to the southwest? My group was out there for a while. It was me, Ann, Ann G., Mary, Wilson, House, and Vic." Pete made a face. "House and Wilson, they were smarter'n Vic. Vic was an engineer."

The masked man looked back at Darryl. Darryl shrugged and said, "I need some stuff, and I'm good."

"You think Pete's telling the truth, don't you?"

Darryl frowned, "I think so. Don't mean he wuddn' lied to."

The masked man paused. "You'd track for food?"

"And water, a good knife—crossbow and bolts maybe. Just for a day or so. I wanna get back." Darryl looked at Pete doubtfully.

The masked man gassed Darryl and cocked his head at Pete. "Tell me."

 _ **I've taken some liberties here, made some guesses. Darryl might think of Shiva as a big housecat—playing with food. Darryl seems to have generic survivor issues, and so should be really good in the situation described above compared to the much-more-expendable Pete. Darryl might be simmering with anger against Eugene but still not wish to risk turning him in or revealing anything else about the Alexandrian situation through Pete. Shaving points, in this case, might mean that Darryl was sizing up the masked man to find out whether Darryl wanted to win or lose. He couldn't have reckoned on the masked man being that insightful, able to read that Darryl was doing it. The comment about any president being better off alive is an homage to Hairy Deewon. Thank you for reminding me that our country can survive any bad president. Our founding fathers did a fantastic job of statecraft. Thanks also by the way for the metrical chapter title challenge. I will be interested to know how soon my choice will be recognized. I'm hoping to submit these every one to two weeks on Fridays until they're done. The next chapter is longer, but already more than half done.**_


	2. Negan And House Start A Small War

_**Yeah-hh, I don't own the stories or the prime mover characters, and I'm not a paid advertiser for the products mentioned. I've chosen to give you the events here like a flashback, because Pete is not what you'd call a good storyteller. Thank you for the encouragement, guys. Enjoy.**_

NEGAN AND HOUSE START A SMALL WAR

Negan came riding up the driveway onto a wooded hill with five other bikers, turned, and parked. The flattish top of the driveway, as well as the cracked blacktop leading up to it, was surrounded and crowded on all sides with pikes to prevent ambush. The pikes, really just sharpened fence posts, broomsticks, and random lumber, stuck out into the driveway so far the motorcycles couldn't have passed each other or turned around till reaching the top. The camp looked rather badly put together. It was a slapped-together place, essentially two houses connected and boarded up with pallets, tables, and mismatched wood of all kinds. A high fence stretched to one side into the woods from the house on the left. A rock wall stretched from the house on the right, ending in a retaining wall. The only thing visible past the combined barricade was a water tower four stories up. Everyone but Negan and a large black man pulled out small machine guns. Negan pulled out Lucille and the large black man pulled two Molotov cocktails, unlit. Negan strode over to the front door of the left house and knocked. "Little pig, little pig, let me in!"

Silence greeted him. He cleared his throat and repeated himself, but louder. After a moment he frowned. "I'm gonna count to three. If nobody's home, I'm gonna have Dozer here light up your front wall. Then I'm gonna have him toss one over the wall. ONE! . . . TWO! . . ."

A hidden panel opened, swinging outward, nearly bashing Negan in the face as he leaned back at the knees. House's breathless face stuck out. "Do you MIND?! I'm trying to settle an argument here. Can you hold the countdown?"

Negan blinked. "Not for long. We've got things to do." He smiled.

House nodded, looking harried, and held a child's walkie up to his mouth. "I don't CARE if you can drop them all, Vic. We talked about this. There are more of them downhill. We saw them." He listened to the garbled static for a moment, apparently understanding at least some of it. "Thirty or so taking care of that horde of undead you called this way with your target practice. I've been telling you the sound echoes." He listened to a bit more. "Right." He rolled his eyes and looked back at Negan. "Do you actually need to come in? We don't have any more comfortable places to sleep, we haven't got much in the way to trade, and I doubt you're here just to give us gifts. We don't want you to go to the trouble you're going to, because our driveway thins herds down to where we can handle them. We haven't laid any particular claims to anything downhill, though we need a lot more stuff, and we generally keep to ourselves. Can I just say 'nice meeting you' and 'we don't want any' and part as unlikely friends?" He gave his best wheedling expression.

Negan smiled widely. "I DO appreciate you asking nicely. I even more appreciate you callin' off your sniper. You are correct in assuming that we would kill all of you if you started something now. A small forest fire at the base of this hill would be easy enough to do." He pulled out a full-sized walkie and put it to his lips. "No need to shoot the sniper. He's been called off. I've begun introductions."

"Right boss, standing down." The walkie crackled a bit.

Negan pocketed it with a big smile. "The short answer is 'no.' Five of us will come inside. If all six of us leave, the fire won't start today. We've been looking for your camp for a while. I only just now found the hidden entrance to your driveway." He reached for the knob expectantly.

House grimaced. "This door doesn't open anymore. The other house door opens, but it's gonna take a minute or two for Mary to get there. And duck as you come in. There's a fake surprise rigged to the floor." He slammed the panel shut and, audibly to everyone outside, shouted. "Mary! Let 'em in!"

Dozer grumbled, stomping up to the other door. Negan and three others walked up behind him, leaving one guarding the bikes, only one of two bikers wearing a helmet. A little over a minute later, the bikers could hear multiple chains coming off the door. Then Mary, a small, wiry, sixty-something black woman in a badly faded flower print, opened the door to the shotgun house. She stepped back to reveal a scuffed, frayed, and stained clutch purse hanging from a walker. (The aluminum kind with tennis balls for feet, not a moving corpse.) She had a stern, disapproving look on her face. Dozer stepped in and jerked to the right as a plastic mannequin arm wearing rags swung down at his left shoulder. He fumbled both bottles, trapping one against the wall to the right. Mary caught the other between the wall and her walker. House came limping into view, slightly out of breath, wearing holey jeans and a t-shirt. "I'm sorry, my good sir, but our on-licenses for bad listening and moronic behavior are not up to date. I'll have to ask you to take your cocktails outside. Might I suggest a seat on the grassy patch between the pile of decaying skulls and the panhead side of your group's convoy?" Negan raised his eyebrows in surprise and amusement as he continued with, "On a clear day, you can JUST make out the steeple at the other end of this JOYful hamlet. The Church Of The Blessed Resurrection! I highly recommend the view for its piquant irony."

Negan smiled wider and handed Dozer the bottle Mary had caught, saying, "Set 'em down out there, Dozer, and come on back. There's a good boy." He looked back at Mary. "Good reflexes. I'm Negan. You must be Mary." She looked at him even more sternly and nodded, just once. Negan smiled. "Steph! I found you a chaperone!"

The third biker back, the other biker wearing a helmet, pulled off her helmet and shook out her dirty blonde hair. "Great, now I get someone to horrify." She had a pierced nose bridge and a Harley Davidson tat on her forehead.

Negan grinned at House. "We're gonna need you to hand us your guns. If you give us no trouble while we're here, we'll give 'em back. Bring 'em here." House rolled his eyes. "Vic has our only gun." House pointed through a high window at the water tower supports, where they could just see a scaffolded platform with Vic on it. Vic was fat, jowly, and wore bib overalls stretched to their limit. Negan shrugged. "How do you ward off the dead?"

"We wait till we can see they're far enough away and go downhill to try our luck. If they make it up our mile-long driveway we put them down by hand."

Negan pulled down his mouth corners in an impressed expression. "I'll need Vic's gun, and it's not that I don't trust you, but I'll need to see everyone here. You don't lie to us or hide from us, we can get done with all our business and leave you be on the quick side. Bring me everyone to the back porch here so I can speak to all of you at once."

House pulled out his child's walkie again. "Wilson? Bring the others out. I'll get Ann Gee." He subtly released the button partway. "She's having another episode." He released it the rest of the way. The walkie crackled some more. "Uh-huh. VIC? THEY WANT YOUR GUN. Slide it down the rope in the case!" He turned to Negan. "Would you help me with this tarp? Best to make her hide her eyes at first. Flip the whole thing this way." He pointed as he limped over to an oddly bulging tarp at the other end of the porch and picked up one end. Negan, a funny look on his face, took the other end. House counted down from three with his fingers, then the two of them flipped the tarp off of the porch.

A woman with a blood-soaked bandage around most of her head leapt at House screeching "Jacob! Jacob! Jacob!" while Negan stared. House grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. He deftly thumped her on the back of the neck with his cane. She fell limp in his arms. House lowered her to the porch, ballooning out her already shapeless dress. "She's having a bad day. I'll get her a doctor's note for the meeting if you want."

"You have a doctor?"

"Technically, he was an oncologist. But he's very sympathetic." He looked at Negan. "That means cancer doctor."

"No, I—I know that. I was wonderin' what happened to her."

"Mike. After he raped her, she had his kid. Then, he got drunk and left her kid to get eaten. She went to hit him, and he broke her face. Wilson stitched her up as best he could, but her mind isn't always 'open for business?' Let's leave it at that." House noted Negan's face changing with subtle interest.

"Where's Mike now?" His voice was only slightly different. Just a bit of an edge.

"Dead. I killed him."

Negan looked surprised. "That what happened to your leg?"

"No, I had that before. I handed Mike some spiked moonshine. I waited till half of it was gone and turned some shelves over on him. Then I nailed his right foot to the shelves . . ."

"Whoa!"

". . . and I limped to my bicycle. The pain sobered him up enough he remembered he had a small pistol I didn't know about. He shot at me, but only managed to ruin my bike. I got away as he was eaten."

Negan smiled then. "VICIOUS bastard! You and Ann Gee a thing now?"

House looked at Negan in apparent shock. "Her? She's not really sane yet. Her baby was all she had, and she hasn't forgiven me for killing Mike yet." He tossed the tarp over her and turned to limp back. "She'll come around someday maybe." Mary came shuffling with her walker out to the porch as Wilson, with a confused and worried look on his face, led Pete and Ann up to the porch. Ann was tall and built like a fullback, easily dwarfing Pete and Wilson. "Where's Ann Gee?" asked Wilson.

"She's in a time out. Negan knows."

"Where's Vic?" said Negan.

House looked up at Vic who wasn't visible. "Apparently he's not coming down."

"So order him down." As Negan shrugged and made the suggestion, Ann snorted, Pete laughed, Wilson made a face, and House rolled his eyes.

"Did you think I was the leader?" said House, "I might make a good one, but Vic's in charge of the home team."

THUMP!

Vic's body landed on a pile of old firewood behind House, and House's eyes grew wide.

"Uh-oh," said House, not turning back.

 _ **Yeah—this is normally where House would look at the camera and go to commercial break . . . but we don't have those in fanfic, as we can't make any money, so . . .**_

Negan peered around House for a moment. "I guess you're the leader now. What's your name?"

"House."

"Well, I'll make this quick. We get half of what you have every time we come by. Just to let you know we're serious, we're going to kill one of your people right now. Steph?!" She lifted her machine gun.

"Wait! You already did that!" House pointed over his shoulder at Vic's body.

"We didn't kill him."

"What do you mean, you didn't kill him? You caused the heart attack! He was scared of YOU!" House looked indignant.

"I mean we didn't choose to kill him," said Negan, "And really you all helped kill him. You let him eat more than his share rather than puttin' his flabby ass on a diet—"

"He ransomed our water! He booby-trapped the whole water tower!"

"You didn't take over. That means you accepted it."

"Well, doesn't that mean we shouldn't accept you killing someone else?"

Negan pulled out a large Bowie knife and pointed it at House. "You want to fight about it?"

House blinked. "Not with weapons. And definitely not to the death. Aren't there too many dead people already? What about negotiation? Isn't there a way we can BUY you not killing anyone else today? You've only talked about your rules. What about ours?"

Negan sheathed the knife, scowling. "I NEVER negotiate on an empty stomach."

House whirled to Pete. "Is Vic's afternoon snack ready yet?"

Pete blanched. "Almost? Needs to be heated up."

House gestured with his head, and Pete went running to the other house, a biker following him. House turned to Wilson. "Bring those pork rinds I was hiding from Vic. Hand them out to our guests. Ann can't have those anyway, having been raised Jewish."

"Amish," said Ann.

"WhatEVERish! Hand those out while Pete's finishing the pasta."

Negan found two bags of pork rinds in his hands a moment later, a bag in the hands of each one of his present members, and a bag beside Steph for the member outside. He blinked, opened a bag and took a mouthful right away. House came limping up to him with two lawn chairs, set them up, and sat down across from him. Negan sat, chewing his second mouthful.

"Technically, you didn't just help kill Vic," began House, "You helped kill everyone here. Vic booby-trapped the water tower, so anyone who tries to get water will die, and we're not mobile enough to survive to find clean water." Negan's eyebrows went up again, and he began to open his mouth as House barreled on. "However! There's no sense in dwelling on that except as a negotiation point. We'd really like to die in peace, Wilson and I. He has cancer. I'm a cripple. We don't have that long. None of us will live but about four days on what we have already portioned out. So why don't I fight one of your other guys with no weapons?"

Negan blinked. "The hell you sayin'?"

"We could vote our newest member be the sacrifice, right? Our by-laws say that we can accept anyone who can beat one of us at an approved contest."

Negan blinked again, beginning to smile.

"I can take him!" Dozer stood from the porch, not really having listened.

House began to stand up.

"Hold up." Negan stood. He turned to Dozer. "You want to join his team?"

"What?" Dozer looked shell-shocked. "Hell, no! I want to fight him. He called me a moron."

Negan stepped up to Dozer and whispered, "Don't resist him or get too loud, or you'll be sorry." He went and sat down again. "He can't fight you for those stakes, because I own him. He's not allowed to fight you."

House frowned slightly. "You mean, you've specifically told him he can't fight back?"

Negan pointed at House's cane. "Four days for all of you to die? We never intended to help cause that. Four hits at my moron—" He glared at Dozer. "—with the cane." Negan and House shared a quiet look of sadistic glee. "Of course, he will have to ride his hog down the hill afterwards, so choose carefully where you hit him."

"I think first I should refresh my golf swing."

Negan smiled an ugly smile. "One! . . . Two! . . . Three!"

"FORE!" House made a perfect golf swing with his cane ending at Dozer's crotch. Dozer doubled over, grunting. "Hogs start with that pedal on the right, right?"

"Right!" Negan was beaming.

House used the cane's hook to pull Dozer's left foot up. House deftly loosened Dozer's boot, dropped it, waited for Dozer to put his foot down, and rammed the end of his cane down onto Dozer's left instep. Dozer shrieked and collapsed to one knee, holding his foot, clenching his teeth around his cursing.

"Oo-oooh. That's two!" Negan was smiling, relaxed.

"Wilson? One of the middle ribs, if it breaks, that's safe, right?"

Wilson blinked. "Um? One of the ribs in the back right middle with a bat swing would be pretty safe, yes." He cringed a little.

House swung and hit. Dozer fell to a crawl, moaning. House stepped a bit closer. "Only one more. This is a difficult choice. Gotta be safe, and I don't like repeating myself . . ." He made a golf swing right between Dozer's legs into his crotch again, causing him to convulse a bit. "But when you repeat yourself, you should always go with the classics!" He twirled the cane.

Negan was laughing as House limped back to his lawn chair. Dozer passed out and hit the deck. Wilson quietly crept up, took Dozer's pulse, and retreated.

"Is there anyone else you've forbidden to fight back?"

Negan shook his head, smiling and holding his stomach.

"Now back to business," said House, "There is a special case in that same set of rules. If I, as ad hoc leader, were to lose a no-weapons fight to YOU, being your group's leader, our group would dissolve. Everyone who wants could go to your place, and maybe you could see your way clear to leave us here to die in peace? You're not headed MAINLY west, are you? Mary? If the Pharaoh Negan here is headed near Kentucky, you'd like to go, wouldn't you?" Mary visibly stiffened as Negan squinted at House. Ann motioned to one of the bikers to accompany her and led him into an outbuilding.

"Not headed to Kentucky, House. Sorry, Mary." Negan smiled.

Mary tightened her grip on her walker. "Wilson? Would you get my gray scarf for me? It's drying on the line out back." She turned to Negan. "My walker folds up. I'll start out now." She began inching toward the door.

House turned back to Negan. "She can get blood and, well, anything out of clothes! She sews well, too. She said she can patch leather if she has a drill to make the stitch-holes with. We don't have a drill. All we need are four days' rations each. You could take ALL the rest of it! I would ask that you leave us some GOOD last meals."

Negan smiled. "Steph? Go take a look in their kitchen. They haven't had time to hide anything, really. Go take a look." He looked at Pete, leading his escort forward with a plate of spaghetti. "Tell me how much we can haul off leaving them sittin' pretty for four days."

"How many would stay?" Steph said to House.

House spoke quietly and rapidly. "Wilson and I and Ann Gee. I promised her once I'd put her down if the situation warranted it. Wilson?! What would dehydration do to her current state?"

Wilson, looking confused as ever, said, "Her STATE? House? Are you asking ME—"

"Is there anyone ELSE named Wilson here? Of course I'm asking you. Last I checked, you were a doctor! What would dehydration do to someone psychotic with PTSD?"

Wilson, looking completely flabbergasted, said, "Well, there's a small chance it would bring them around before it killed them, but . . ." Pete, looking preoccupied, handed Negan a plateful of spaghetti.

House, noticing the extra fork, grabbed it and tasted the spaghetti, nodding. "Good enough; thank you, Pete. I'm on the hook for killing her for being crazy or saving her sanity in time for her imminent demise." He turned to Negan. "This sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Eat up while you consider my proposal."

Negan pointed at one of the more muscular bikers and waved at him to help Mary. "This spaghetti looks pretty good. Pete the cook?" Negan took a bite.

"Yes. Pete? Would you rather go be part of Pharaoh Negan's biker gang or stay here and die with us?"

Pete gaped. "I'll get my go-bag." He scurried off, biker following him.

Negan smiled, chewing. Steph grinned and started toward the kitchen.

"He's no good in a fight, but that's possum spaghetti, if you can believe that."

Negan looked down at the spaghetti in obvious disbelief. "Really?! Impressive." He took another large bite.

Ann, now wearing a backpack, came walking out of the outbuilding, leading her escort out. Ann continued out to the motorcycles. Negan waved at her escort to follow Steph.

House grimaced, "and it looks like Ann made her decision as well. She's our butcher. Three with you. Technically, you're taking half our group. It looks like all I have to do now is fight you. What would I get if I win?"

"You think you could kill me with your bare hands?"

"Oh, GOD; we're not fighting to the DEATH! Just till one of us gives up! You should NEVER kill people you don't know—that just practically invites revenge." Negan slightly startled. "Besides," House barreled on, "That would undo all our arrangements."

Negan stood, spaghetti eaten. "Okay, I'm ready. If you win, what say I round up ten gallons of water and a kid's scooter and have it dropped off within two days. That's fair, isn't it?"

"Can you leave the contents of the smokehouse?" House pointed.

"What you got in there?"

"I think Ann said it was beaver. They were small, though. Could be rat. She doesn't like me much."

"Done. Put up your dukes."

House raised his fists—and threw himself down on the porch. He melodramatically yelled as he kept his face deadpan. "Owww! Owww! I give up! You win! You're the man! He hit me so fast I didn't even SEE it!" He opened his mouth in mock amazement.

Negan dropped his fists, laughing. "You're really funny. In awful good spirits for someone gonna die soon."

House nodded. "Chronic pain will do that. My leg's been aching for too many years."

"Make you welcome death or be funny?"

"Both." House reached up. Negan hauled him to his feet and shook his hand.

Steph came trotting back. "Smokehouse's got small stuff in it. Eighteen meals, maybe. Hundred meals or so in the pantry. Some chocolate. There's a still, too, but it's too big to take today."

Negan nodded. "Leave the still and the smokehouse and—thirty big meals. Take half the chocolate. Pack it up." He strode over to Dozer and kicked him. "Get up! You're leadin' us down the hill. AND you're carryin' as much as we can tie to you and your hog. Go to Steph and start carryin' it out."

It took longer for Mary to walker herself to the bikes than it did for them to tie Dozer to his bike and tie rough parcels of food to him and his filled compartments. Mary folded up her walker, slung it over the shoulder opposite her purse, and was positioned behind a huge biker feeling up his bicep in seconds. Snickering at her obvious enjoyment, he drove off fourth, right after Ann shouldered her backpack and got on behind Steph to ride off on the third bike. Negan waved as the fifth biker started down. "We'll probably be comin' back here soon after you're dead for your still. You understand." He pulled Pete onto the bike behind himself.

"Feel free to put us down if you find us here dead," called House, waving.

Wilson, beside him in the front door, whispered, "We're really going to be okay?"

House turned away to limp out the back. "No, of course not." He waved one hand melodramatically and spoke flatly in the doorway, "We're all gonna die."

"What?! We just got away with that! And somehow you kept him from salivating all over Ann Gee." Wilson shrieked as he saw Ann Gee's bloody bandages through the window.

House took a set of binoculars from Ann Gee and tossed them to Wilson. "It's fake! Just watch them leave?! Tell me how it goes wrong." He turned to Ann Gee. "JACOB?!" He shook his head at her.

"Sorry, House. You adapted fine, though. We good?"

"No, we're not good. We're all gonna die, unless maybe you shoot Negan and they all decide to leave without taking revenge. Stay in cover. Last bike of six. Climb for it."

Ann Gee leapt for a nearby ladder, and House stared after her for a moment before limping hurriedly to the still.

A third of a mile down the hill, right after a bend in the road, suddenly Ann drew a knife with her left hand and jabbed it up under Steph's ribs. Ann gave the knife a twist, and then, reaching up and taking the handlebars, revved the engine as Steph crumpled and fell off the bike. Ann rammed the bike in front of her, sending the second biker to be skewered by pikes and the bike sliding sideways down the hill off the road.

Uphill, Wilson's eyes bugged out. "HOU—SE!?" House started banging on something out of his view. "Stay there! Was that Ann or Mary getting killed?" As they spoke, Ann rammed into the belabored Dozer, causing both his bike and hers to slam into the bank with a sickening crunch. "That—was Ann," called Wilson, "What are you doing?"

"Keep watching!"

Ann Gee hollered down. "House? Not many bullets here."

"Make 'em count."

Negan screeched his bike to a halt. He watched the biker in front of him catch up to the biker with Mary, who had stopped at Steph's body. He noted them dismounting. Mary scowled at the wreckage downhill and shook her head. "Count on a butcher to be violent." The fifth biker said, "Knifed Steph. You holding any?"

Mary looked at him funny. "I would NEVER have a knife!" She handed him her purse and unfolded her walker as the biker she'd been riding with began to pat her down. "I prefer bombs." Mary twisted her brooch. Her purse blew up. It blew the biker holding it in half, the other biker out of his boots, and Mary into the pikes.

Uphill, Wilson called out, "House?! Mary's dead too. What'd you say to them?"

"Just keep watching! Anj, fire!"

Ann Gee fired. The shot went so wide, Negan didn't even notice it. House was the only one to have known that sound was dampened downhill but magnified uphill by the odd acoustics of this particular wooded hillside. Negan carefully reached into the sharp pikes to his left and gripped one. Twisting it with all his strength, he pulled it loose. "Pete?"

Pete swallowed noisily. "Yes?"

"If you do anything to me, you'll burn with your friends uphill. But if you ride down with me, I'll probably kill you with my knife. What do you want to do?"

"Give me a chance to cook for you, Negan. I don't fight good. You get me off this hill alive, and I'll be the best cook you've got. Just need time to learn how you like stuff."

Negan stood the pike against the handlebars and twisted loose a second one. He placed it about parallel to the ground between his left thigh and the bike, point sticking a full two feet in front of the bike. He put the other on his right shoulder and said, "Hold this right here. Don't let go." A bullet ricocheted off the driveway in front of them. Negan drove down the hill slowly, right over the first two bikes, spearing one of the dead bikers' heads as it lifted with the left pike. Mary's undead body was still trying to use the walker, impaled by three pikes. Negan seized the pike on his shoulder and twisted it slightly, catching Steph's body right through the neck as they rolled past, causing her head to tilt down at an odd angle. As Negan and Pete drove up to Ann's body, a head shot from Ann Gee put Ann's body down. Negan drove right over Ann's body without pause.

Uphill, Ann Gee cursed a blue streak. "House! Negan's getting away! I missed!"

"Shoot him!"

"That was the last bullet!"

"Bring me Vic's remote!"

"You don't know the code!"

"Just bring it! Wilson! Come join us at the still!"

Ann Gee picked up a leather glove, shouldered Vic's backpack, and put the glove on. She grabbed a hanging rope with the gloved hand, wrapped her other hand around it, and slid down the rope to land with her right boot partly on Vic's head, as his upper half was beginning to climb the woodpile. She dashed away, not noticing that the blow didn't end Vic's corpse. She unshouldered the backpack and handed it down to House, who was half in one of seven plastic chemical barrels in a shallow pit in the ground. "What now?"

House took the remote out of Vic's backpack. "You have two minutes." He heaved two empty backpacks at her. "Fill these with food and get back here. Go!" He started pushing buttons on the remote as she ran for the kitchen.

Wilson reappeared, having pulled a tarp over with some homemade armor on it. "It should take them longer than three minutes to turn and drive back up to kill us, House. Why two minutes?"

"We're not waiting. Get in that barrel."

"The still's not—"

"GET IN THE BARREL! I need you to put this backpack against the red 'x' in the bottom."

"The red—? Okay?!" He stepped in and bent down into the barrel. "House? There's no 'x,' nothing in here but gray padding, an oxygen tank, and a tubing pack with a mask? HEY!" Wilson cried out as House closed the lid of the barrel and fastened it shut. Wilson shook the barrel, struggling against the lid for a moment.

House pulled out two plastic barrel lids, some rope, a pulley, and a small pry bar. He stuffed the pry bar into the padding of one barrel. He thumped on Wilson's lid. "Turn on the oh-two, Wilson! Put your mask on." He listened for a moment, nodding. "You can thank me later!" Ann Gee came running up with two backpacks. House took the smaller one. "Get in there, quick!" Ann Gee froze.

"I . . . can't do that."

"You'll die if you stay out here. Vic's bombs will go off, and the water will kill everything in its direct path."

Ann Gee ripped off the fake bandage headpiece, revealing an absolutely beautiful, unscarred Chinese face. "You KNOW it took me two WEEKS to be able to wear this under that tarp!"

"You're right," said House, sighing, "Help me out of here."

Ann Gee tossed aside her shapeless dress and lumpy rags to reveal a too-tight dress barely covering a fantastic figure. She braced herself and hauled House out—and then jerked as if stung. "What—?" She collapsed into House's arms. With a wry smile, he tossed away the syringe he'd just stuck her with and pushed her down into the barrel. He turned on the tank, fitted the mask on over her face, tightened the strap, added a food backpack and padding, and cinched down the lid with a small fastener. He quickly used the pulley and the rest of the rope to tie the barrels together as tightly as he could manage, reinforcing the joins already in place. He recoiled as he heard the charges go off overhead. He rolled to his barrel, yanked everything in, and closed the modified lid, muttering—"Niagara Falls, eat your heart out."

 _ **Ha! How could House NOT pick out Negan's feelings about rape when conning him to believe Ann Gee's disguise and use them to decide how to fight Negan's takeover? How could he NOT enjoy a bit of doing definite harm in flagrant violation of his old oath? How could he NOT bond a bit, sharing a moment with his new frienemy? How could he NOT have developed an escape plan using all of the resource he'd been kept from his whole time living there? And, of course, how could he possibly not have antagonized the angriest enforcer Negan had with him and outsmarted him all at the same time? (All while making generally derogatory declarations about religion and culture, too.) Where absolute power corrupts absolutely, absolute snarkiness absolutely cheeses off corrupt power. Or something like that.)**_


	3. See That House's Still Won't Go Far

_**Okay, so I don't think Pete's storytelling would've given you this much. Pete himself probably won't KNOW this much, no matter how well the gossip runs at the Sanctuary. So we'll stick to limited omniscient 3**_ _ **rd**_ _ **person variable focus.**_

SEE THAT HOUSE'S STILL WON'T GO FAR

When Negan reached the base of the hill and drove out from between the two rusted-out cars that hid the driveway entrance, another biker was waiting. "Hold this asshole, Oak. Fitz! Start up for Dozer's hog." Negan ordered. A second biker started up the hillside on foot. The big biker standing nearby seized Pete and cleared his throat as Negan dismounted. Negan glared at him. "What, Oak?! What is it?"

"I almost told Fitz to shoot the new sniper, but we couldn't tell what she was shootin' at. Aimin' all over the place. I'm sorry."

Pete cringed. "Ann Gee can't shoot. She's House's hooker."

Negan glared at Pete. "And she didn't have a kid named Jacob or a boyfriend named Mike either, did she?"

Pete looked at him, shocked. "Not that I know of. He kept me workin' in the kitchen when they went at it. Said he was always hungry an hour after. She was pretty hot; I guess he thought I'd peek."

Negan blinked. "You weren't there for it when he said. . ." Negan shook himself. "Why did the two old ladies turn on us? He say a code word?" He frowned hard.

Pete blanched and shook his head. "House had a code using different states but didn't say one. Florida was trading partners, Maine meant people who would be sneaky about killing us, Kentucky was people who would rape us all and kill us when they got tired of torturing us." He saw Negan grit his teeth. "Did he say Kentucky? I didn't hear him give a code, though! I figured we were really splittin' up! I wouldn't have come to be raped, Pharaoh Negan. Let me cook for you instead."

"You won't be raped, and why are you calling me Pharaoh?!" Negan looked at Pete in annoyance.

"You smiled when House said it earlier. He told me once that was code too. It means you have a pyramid scheme, but he never said what that was."

Negan snorted. "No titles. Get on." He mounted his bike.

"Is 'Mr.' a title?" Pete climbed on.

Negan blinked, then smiled. "I believe it is, Pete." He turned back to Oak. "I'm gonna head over to Viper's place. This guy can make possum spaghetti taste good."

Pete nodded. "You got oregano over there?"

Negan grinned. "Yeah. Take down that fence and run the herd straight uphill, Oak, 'cause there's not but three of 'em left. Then find a truck and take their still. Don't touch the water tower till Viper gets here. Booby traps. House WAS tellin' the truth about that, wasn't he?"

"Yeah. I saw the bombs and spring-load knives."

Negan nodded in approval. He drove away, signaling one biker to follow him. The remaining thirty of Negan's men, carrying mangled chain link fences, chairs, cracked riot gear, and rusty metal roofing, drove the small remaining herd through the fence as they downed it and straight toward the steep embankment—

. . . and a tsunami came down the hill, crushing everything in its path. Nearly a mile away uphill and to one side, well clear of the destruction, Negan, Pete, and the other biker stopped to turn and look. Negan's eyebrows twitched. "Shit, House." He turned and motored away.

Nine days later, a man in a muddy vest walked over the dried silt to the edge of the road where Negan sat on his bike, frowning. The man shook his head. "Nothing intact up there, Negan. You were lookin' for a still?"

Seeing Negan nod, the man shrugged. "Nothin' bigger'n a flat cooking pot; I never seen one of those before. I've never seen anything like this. Why'd you blow up the water tower?"

Negan shook his head. "Don't ask me about that. What happened here was because they weren't properly respectful. Remember Steph?"

The man licked his lips. "I do. She was with me a couple times."

"They killed her."

The man nodded grimly. "I get it. You want no survivors. You got 'em all, then?"

Negan frowned. "I kept one. They didn't have him in on their plans. He makes a damn good cook, if you just watch how much he samples. Clear it out, everything useful. Be careful. I hear you had to put down a couple a guys."

The man thumped his chest. "Two guys fell in a mud-covered pond. Six heads with barely more than an arm attached each crawled on 'em like demon snakes. One of the guys was eaten alive, the other almost got out. One bite. He told us to put him down when the fever hit. We did."

Negan nodded. "Bring it all to the Sanctuary." He rode off.

The man with the mud-covered vest turned to see a small red-haired man with a neck tattoo smiling at him. "What?"

The small man pointed. "They found something! It's right against the road on the other side of the truck! We never would've found it under the broken stuff but for the noise. Seven plastic barrels lashed together. Four full of ratty Styrofoam burst, but the middle three got a hose between 'em. They're about to get the moving one's lid off."

The man with the mud-covered vest blinked. "Moving one?"

"Yeah."

They trotted around the truck. Two men were cursing over their work with two rusty pairs of pliers, one bent. The barrel was on its side, jerking a bit every second or two. Finally, one of them tore loose a critical piece of metal rim. The lid came away forcibly, pushed by two decaying feet wearing high-heeled shoes with the high heels missing. The undead awkwardly climbed out feet-first and struggled to its feet. It was wearing a closed, dirty yellow raincoat and a dirtier blonde wig, and it had a bank envelope taped to its front with the words, 'Negan's tribute' written on it in black magic marker. Unnoticed, a dirty, greenish, translucent tube ran from inside the barrel up the raincoat out of sight. One of the men stepped forward with a knife and ended the undead figure, gracefully snatching the envelope. "It's empty!" he called as the body fell. There was the sound of a striker. Three half-empty oxygen tanks blew up, shrapnel killing seven of the ten people scavenging nearby.

 _ **Yeah, House has come to terms with killing indirectly, and has even become skilled and efficient at it. Setting booby traps is just an extension of pranking your enemy to death if they're stupid enough to fall for it. Thank you for reading. I am pleased to announce that I've come in second so far on Hairy's metrical title challenge.**_


	4. Darryl Goes With Our Unknown Star

_**Wow, I'm published way ahead of schedule. I'm slowing down a bit now, partly for the holiday, and partly for technical issues that need a bit more research. IRL stuff has gotten worse too, but I'm hanging in. If any of this next part seems unbelievable, check out the author's notes and the list at the end of this chapter, as I've done feasibility checking and may not have written as believably as I have feasibly. Please enjoy, review, and tell me what you have already thought of and what you didn't realize was possible.**_

DARRYL GOES WITH OUR UNKNOWN STAR

A peculiar-looking vehicle sped quietly out of the darkness. It was shaped, vaguely, like an upturned knife blade in sections with the lead section tapering downwards to its point. Essentially a battery-powered all-terrain motorcycle under an aerodynamic shell, it was remarkably noiseless and matte black, giving no reflection. The second and third sections, towed along behind, were almost as aerodynamically thin and low. The vehicle plowed through six undead ambling down the road, scooping them so that they were catapulted over and to the sides, and came to a stop just before a wrecked semi blocking the entrance to an overpass.

The cab was crumpled around a barricade on the left. The trailer was jackknifed across the road at a diagonal, its rear sticking out over a slight, rocky drop-off without a guardrail. A panel door swung up on the left side of the front section of the odd vehicle. The masked man stepped out, a pair of night vision goggles over his ski mask. Drawing a long chef's knife in each hand, he deftly put down the three dead standing back up from impact with the vehicle and six more walking around the semi, spinning gracefully. The masked man cocked his head for a moment, sheathing the knives and studying the semi. He stepped to a fallen highway sign, picked it up, and whirled, decapitating a walking dead woman in a bloody dress. Completing his turn, he squatted, scraping the sign under the edge of the trailer's lead outside tire.

Pulling a pack out of the vehicle, he reached in and pulled out a spray can labelled 'Freon.' He adjusted a pair of matte-black gauntlets and walked toward the semi, shaking the spray can. He sprayed the hitch in a slow, back-and-forth motion. Condensation rapidly formed on the hitch. It iced over and cracked, loudly. The masked man collared a dead man in a suit crawling out from under the trailer and shoved him into the trailer hitch. The dead man staggered, started walking toward the masked man again. With a kick to the sternum, the masked man sent the dead man reeling into the hitch again. The two began cycling through the same motions, one shambling obliviously and the other with the precision and efficiency of a seasoned martial artist. After the fifth kick, the dead man cracked on impact with the trailer hitch. His left shoulder caved in. The trailer hitch broke into three pieces, partially separating the tractor and trailer. Two dead climbing over the hitch mount fell onto the pavement. Moving faster, the masked man broke both necks with one well-placed kick and tied one end of a rope to the hitch mount. He strung a length of rope across the street to the concrete barricade the sign had been attached to and tied it off, cutting the end loose from the coil up under his shirt.

He trotted back to the vehicle, stomping a growling head on the way, and pulled out a small bucket, a backpack, and a black, six-inch-wide, foot-long tube with a handle. He hung the bucket from a hook he folded out from his belt. He shouldered the noticeably heavier backpack, pulled a connector out of it, and hooked it to the handle of the tube. A small thumping came from inside the vehicle's second compartment. The masked man hesitated, then stepped over and opened it, swinging it up just like the first section. Darryl leaned out. "Wanta stretch ma legs."

"This way," the masked man led Darryl a few steps to the first compartment. The masked man folded out a grille from waist to eye level and a short treadmill just above the pavement. "Walk on that. I can't spare you a real weapon right now."

Darryl looked doubtfully at the treadmill. "You use walkers on that?"

The masked man cocked his head. "Dead. Yes. The dead walk on that."

Darryl tried it out. It was fairly quiet. Darryl walked on it, studying the setup as the masked man stepped forward and pulled a large, rusty bolt from the bucket. He tossed it up to the handheld tube and it silently fired between the tractor and trailer, downing an emerging dead woman wearing a choir robe. He reached into the bucket and held up a fork level to the ground. He aimed carefully, and the handheld device fired it into the skull of a skeletal man wearing a dress shirt and boxers emerging as the dead woman had. It fell.

"What IS that?" said Darryl.

"Coil gun," said the masked man. "Fires any iron or steel small object with magnetism. Takes a lot of battery power. One moment." The next dead body crawled out from under the semi. The masked man drew a staple gun and a small parcel from the vehicle's first section. He opened a volleyball net and stapled one end to the dead body as it walked into the rope. With two more well-placed staples, the masked man had the undead figure pinioned to the rope near the concrete barrier, spreading the net's end vertically from the rope at waist level to shoulder. The masked man unrolled the net to the trailer hitch and tied it off with a bit of twine from a pocket. The masked man got a second volleyball net out and stapled it from waist to shin. He unrolled it to the hitch mount and tied it off to the undercarriage of the trailer. A second dead man joined the first. The masked man fell back, downing three more dead coming between the cab and the trailer. "Walked enough?" Darryl nodded. "I'll get a dead one to keep charging the vehicle. You look like you have questions."

Darryl sat in the edge of his seat. "Where'd you get this thing?"

Two more dead joined the first three in the nets. "I built it. The plans for the first section, minus the shell and a few tweaks, were on file with an investment company when the dead rose. I used a bit more titanium than the steel they called for, but I needed the weight allowance for other things." The masked man neatly grabbed another dead body, the only one to have come from behind them, spun it completely around, and pushed it onto the treadmill. He rolled out a second grille and snapped it around the dead thing, locking it onto the treadmill. He glanced back, noting three more had joined the five in the nets. He trotted up and stapled them to the net and tested the rope. He broke the elbow of the only arm reaching over the net and walked back. "This treadmill is actually pretty efficient. I get over a thousand feet of travel to the dead-mile walked. Solar array, too." Darryl looked at him doubtfully. The masked man tossed Darryl a long flathead screwdriver. "Just in case," said the masked man. He walked back and silently fired some rusty nails at three more dead walking around the cab. They fell. He walked back to Darryl. Darryl frowned, "So, what are we lookin' for?"

"There are far too many little towns with churches with 'Resurrection' in their names. So I found the only steeplejack in the regional phone book and broke into his home. I was lucky enough he had a well-made map. I broke into the three water companies' offices in this area and took their maps. I resized the maps to match—"

"That's what that light was? A copy machine?"

"Yes. Nobody had taken the office supplies or ruined the equipment in that last office. I have a small ACDC converter unit. I used cheap fax paper for the final copies and did an overlay, eliminating everywhere that didn't have a listed water tower. That left four small townships. One of them had the water tower on the south side, so that left three. This is the second one. It looks promising! The exit off this highway is the fastest way to get there. One moment." The masked man pulled a small tool apron out of the vehicle and put it on, trotting downhill to the retaining pond. Using a pair of wire cutters, he rapidly cut loose a long section of chain link fence, bent the only two posts along its length outward, pulled it off them, and dragged it uphill. He wired one end to the concrete barrier, top and bottom, and stomped a head or a neck here and there as he wrapped the length of fence around the now roiling mass of about twenty dead in the reinforced volleyball nets. He stapled several dead to the fence, legs, arms, and torso, the top corner of the fence nearer the hitch end of the semi and wired the middle to the hitch mount with the cut ends. He pulled the coil gun and ended six more dead just out of sight of Darryl between the cab and trailer. He stapled the legs of three trampled bodies to the bottom of the fence at the hitch end and fired some more shards of metal under the semi and cab. As the dead faltered a bit, he pulled a hammer and smashed the trailer hitch pieces. He picked them up and put them in his bucket. He peeked between the cab and the trailer and sighed. He walked back. "Only about thirty more coming. Six more behind us. We don't want to be here all night."

"What're yew doin'?"

"I prefer to use the dead as mules. Starting an engine could tell a living person where I am. Fifty dead can turn a semi, even a loaded one, if they get it rocking and you put the tires out at the right time. I obviously prefer travel at night. Night vision is all I need. The dead DO register on infrared as about ten degrees higher than the air around them at their cores and brain stems. One moment." The masked man trotted back down the road to return with his left hand on the back of the neck of a dead mechanic holding a crescent wrench. The masked man hurried the mechanic along, neatly breaking the wrench hand loose at the wrist. The masked man climbed up onto the hitch mount and baited the dead mechanic to climb after him. The masked man led him up to the top of the hitch mount and pushed him off behind the semi. He jumped back down. He pulled out a bottle of Purell and went over his gauntlets and the wrench as he fetched it. He put the wrench on his toolbelt. He pulled homemade bullets from the tool apron and used the coilgun to flatten all the tires on the hitch end except the closest one. He kicked the signpost twice, adjusting the sign's placement. He flattened the last tire. The entire semi rocked in place, crumpling the sign around the wheel. The masked man opened fire at the dead coming into view at the hitch mount, felling six more. He motioned Darryl to sit in his seat. Darryl hesitated, but did so. The masked man felled a closing dead man as he trotted back to the vehicle, shut Darryl's door, felled another, and got in. He powered up the vehicle, turned its nose to the left about two feet—and the entire trailer rolled in an arc, missing the vehicle by inches as it crushed the dead to pieces and slid down the hill into the retaining pond. The masked man got out shooting, downing the last fifteen dead able to walk. He flipped a switch in the handle of the coilgun, pulled out a different bucket, and walked blithely around the bodies, using the coilgun to pull small metal debris from them. Each piece made a gentle arc in the air to be caught in the new bucket. The masked man rummaged a bit, pulled out a scratched Swiss Army knife, and came back to Darryl, using Purell on his gauntlets again. He pulled a bottle of Wesson oil out of a lower cabinet in his section, poured some into the debris bucket, and put everything back in its place, capping and stowing everything with practiced motions. He got in and drove them through the half-cleared highway, dawn a good three hours away. The grilles opened as they and the treadmill retracted, the speed of travel tearing the feet off their most recent power source. The body smashed to the pavement and lay still forever.

 _ **For those of you who don't know:**_

 _ **Coilguns are real. They are a more efficient variation of the rail gun, and there are internet tutorials on how to make one strong enough to fire a finishing nail twenty feet into wood with no more power than a disposable camera. It strikes me as the perfect weapon in the zombie apocalypse. This model I've imagined uses a trio of rechargeable lantern batteries and the equations for the circuits and specs of wire could be easily derived from any good physics book by any amateur technician.**_

 _ **Freon, such as the masked man uses on the hitch mount, is a real thing too. It used to be used commonly in air conditioners and readily available to retailers with the right permits before it became more thoroughly regulated. It can be used to destroy just about any rigid object if you don't mind messing with the ozone layer a bit.**_

 _ **The vehicle is loosely based on a combination of a speed cycle (aerodynamic shell around a racing bicycle) and a Zero, a battery-powered motorcycle talked up by Norman Reedus himself in "Ride" as the motorcycle of choice in the z.a. The treadmill charging system is my idea, but really—such a convenient source of power? Why IS no one using it in the shows? It's not like anyone has a need for gym equipment for anything ELSE in these shows!**_

 _ **The force required to tip over a semi IS high, but rocking one and putting out the right tires with near perfect timing? Forty people without fatigue or fear should be more than enough force. The only thing just as likely on a solid concrete bridge ramp would have been if the trailer had collapsed first instead of rolled to its side—and that still would've crushed most of the dead and given our two heroes something relatively flat to drive over and possibly still room to drive past.**_

 _ **Thank you all for reading. I welcome readers and reviewers.**_


	5. These Two Trackers Traveled So Far

_**I'm interested to know more guesses on who the masked man is. I won't confirm or deny them, but I will thank you for them and acknowledge the correct ones at the end. Sorry this installment is shorter, but everyone needs a holiday. I've got some longer ones coming soon, and this is Friday's installment.  
**_

THESE TWO TRACKERS TRAVELED SO FAR

The masked man panned the horizon slowly in the early dawn, adjusting his eyepiece with switches while Darryl studied the road around a debris pile next to a rotting body in a charred, dirty yellow raincoat and dirtier blonde wig. Darryl shook his head. "Sorry. Only tracks are too fresh."

The masked man nodded. "That means they likely weren't found. Interesting booby trap. House couldn't have toted the oxygen tanks, so he caught a dead woman—" The masked man did a double-take, reaching into the raincoat. "A dead MAN. Dressed it as easily as possible to look like a woman. Used the body as bait somehow. A simple striker to ignite the oxygen flowing out of a suddenly unkinked tube straight to the tanks. He bored holes for this."

"Naw."

The masked man turned his head.

"Looka that."

The masked man startled, following Darryl's pointing finger. "The holes were drilled before the tank blew—to hold the barrels together! That's why it was Styrofoam rather than air in the barrels. Otherwise, the barrels would have leaked when punctured and sunk, not been found in the same spot. Good catch, Darryl!"

Darryl stared at him. "You're not puttin' on that tough voice anymore."

The masked man startled. "I guess I trust you now." He paused. "From the shaped tearing around the holes, the barrels were held together with chains. But there are no chains or rope here. Just the barrels under a pile of smashed, waterlogged plywood—oh."

"Oh?"

"That's how House didn't leave tracks. He laid out everything he could reach in the mud, like a walkway to the road. He and maybe his friends, if they survived, left by the road." The masked man rummaged through the plywood, coming up with some broken boards with no silt on them. "These he added later to come back. Maybe to make the booby trap. All he needed was some more silted plywood scraps to throw on top of them from the road here. This one has blood on it. Probably got a few splinters."

Darryl looked at the broken, unsilted boards. "Deck." He turned away and started walking, screwdriver at the ready. At the edge of town, right on the road, were three houses. One of them had a wrecked deck. Darryl pointed at the wrecked deck. They spent a few minutes walking up to it in silence. There was a Confederate flag wrapped around a tacked-together mess of splintered wood and odd hardware protruding from it. The masked man examined it for a moment. Darryl shook his head. "Homemade sail," said the masked man, "Mounted on mismatched wheels. Some of these spars are gore-covered. He made a . . . sailcart. He may have had a hard time with a small herd. Bicycle's missing." The masked man pointed at the silhouette of a bicycle in half shade on the lower deck boards.

Darryl nodded. "That's the lookout post." He pointed to the upper window. He kicked the door in and stood back. Half a red-haired dead man came crawling out. He had a tattoo of a skull on his neck. His fingers had been cut off. Darryl put it down. "There's 'is guard dog." He pointed in a window to show a baby gate across the stairs to the second story with some empty soda cans piled against it. "Thass 'larm system."

The masked man nodded. "Booby trap victim, probably. Then they prepared it to be unable to reach the upper floors without setting off their homemade alarm." He turned it over. "They used FlexSeal or PlastiDip on the bottom to keep it intact longer and fight the smell, no doubt. Good thinking."

Darryl turned and gave the masked man a look. He went back to studying tracks off the side of the porch. "Real old boot tracks. Lots of back and forth. Bike, too. They got ready to leave, watchin' from here. Loaded up." He stepped down to examine a tire print closely. He squinted, lifted part of a sticker.

The masked man nodded, recognizing the sticker. "They found a biofuel-powered car. All they'd need would be a composting system and a good chemistry set to keep it in fuel."

Darryl gave him another funny look.

"Well, it wouldn't win races, but it would haul. And they're sometimes quieter than other cars. I think we should check that out." The masked man pointed at a department store. Darryl nodded, seeing that one mannequin in the group had no top and was bald. The two men cleared some thirty dead from the department store and reconnoitered. The masked man nodded. "Two canoes, inflatables, camping gear, and portable tools. I can take you back to your bike now. I know where they were going."

"What if they moved on?"

"I know where to find you. Just do your best to stay alive."

They walked back to the vehicle. The masked man drove him for an hour to a row of warehouses in silence. He let Darryl out, handing him a small parcel and a large bottle of water. "I'm really behind. There's one more MRE than promised and a second screwdriver. I've left you an extra mile to walk, since you're stealthier during the day on foot. We ARE coming into range of their patrols. Good luck."

Darryl nodded, "You too." He stood back as the masked man closed his vehicle doors and raced away. Darryl shook his head, widening his eyes for a moment, and turned to walk to where he'd hidden the bike.

 _ **FlexSeal and PlastiDip are both reasonable choices for preservation of your crippled, half-zombie 'guard dog,' FlexSeal being more non-skid and PlastiDip being available in colors to match your wallpaper. Darryl has served the masked man well. Remember how he 'analyzed' the shack he and Maggie's sister stopped at? That was the basis of how he interpreted House's lookout point. How does the masked man know where they went? Who is he? Please read and review.**_


	6. These Three Think Somebody Said Rahr

_**Okay, so I didn't win the metrical challenge. It's been amusing anyway. Some of my chapter titles are still planned out to somewhat meet it. Like this three-parter. It's a little short, but at least you don't have to wait till next Friday for it. Enjoy!**_

THESE THREE THINK SOMEBODY SAID 'RAHR:'

Hooking The Hooker

Two days later, sunrise peeked up through the mountains, reflecting off of windows in the four-story building. It was isolated, with a cracked blacktop driveway barely more than a turnaround circle only a single lane wide, and a parking lot only big enough for sixty cars. The vehicular bridge was out, having fallen some time ago into the small stream below. The weather-beaten sign on the side of the building said 'Corporate Somatic Maintenance Solutions.' Over in the distance, the ruined vehicular bridge across a raging stream cast shade on a small residential property with a boathouse. In the shade of the boathouse was a biofuel-powered car with a surprisingly bad paint job. It had been a bright green before uneven applications of olive and brown house paint had been applied in a crude attempt at a camouflage pattern. In back of the four-story building, away from prying eyes, a small, curvaceous, Asian woman was repeatedly and rather badly missing a homemade target with homemade arrows and a like-new compound bow. She was swearing quietly in three languages and occasionally rubbing her chest above her right breast near the armpit in obvious pain. A dead woman in curlers and a water-soaked housedress staggered out of the woods behind the target. The dead body shambled around the target, rotted flesh dangling off the legs. The pretty woman fired three arrows in rapid succession, missing all three times, before saying, "Fuck," and poking an arrow through the dead body's mouth by hand. A quick twist separated the head from the body.

A masked man wearing all black and a backpack stepped out of the shadows behind her sheathing a chef's knife.

The woman shook her head—and the new head off the arrow and stiffened as the masked man reached around her and squirted a small puff of aerated liquid onto the woman's lower face. The woman weakly threw an elbow, which he neatly caught. He bodily lifted her away from the twitching, chomping head on the cracked pavement as she went limp. The masked man paused there for a moment, listening. He zip-tied the woman's hands at the wrists and legs at the ankles, laid her gently down, and tried the door. Opening it, a legless dead man with ten stumps for fingers tipped over onto his boot. Sighing, the masked man pulled a bungee cord from a pocket, bound the dead thing around the neck, fastened the bungee cord to his boot laces, grabbed the woman by the arms, and towed her inside, limping with the weight of the dead half-body. He laid the woman on the reception desk. Bending down, he twisted the dead torso up towards himself and noted an odd texture on the bottom. Nodding his head, he let the torso fall and put a homemade bar across the door from where it leaned on the wall. He opened the first drawer of the reception desk and riffled the files. Pulling one out, he opened it and rapidly turned pages for a moment. He returned the files to their places. Nodding to himself, he drew a small toolkit from a pocket and crossed the lobby. He rapidly picked the lock of a maintenance closet, shouldered the woman, gently deposited her within it, bungeed the half a body to the rolling office chair behind the reception desk, stood up on the desk, attached a small device from a pocket to the wall above an abstract picture's frame, climbed down, and trotted down the hallway out of sight. The undead half-body tried unsuccessfully sixty-three times to pull the office chair through the gap between the wall and the desk before moving to the kneehole to thump at it incessantly.

Wilson Deflated

Wilson put on the over-sized rain boots and opened the stairwell door. He wore an expression of distaste as he peered around the lobby, holding a small pushbroom. He walked out, hearing the thumping behind the reception desk and frowned at the vibrating office chair. He looked at the bar on the door and frowned harder. He walked to the ladies' room door and knocked. "Ann?" He waited. He looked back at the exterior door. He walked to it and peered outside for a moment at the compound bow and arrows, the headless woman, and the head with the hair in curlers. Startling, he ran back to the ladies' room and knocked louder. "ANN?! Have you been bitten?" He reached down to push the door and paused. He looked over his shoulder at the vibrating office chair. He walked back over to the desk and pushed the chair back to the wall with the broom. He frowned at the mouth of the dead half-body. He let the chair go. He turned to walk back toward the ladies' room. He stopped. "How? . . ." He turned back around and returned to the desk. He pushed the chair back from the desk with the broom again. "Blue bungee cord? We don't have any—" His eyes went wide. He turned and ran for the stairs. The masked man stepped out of the hallway and seized the broom with his left hand, jerking Wilson around. The masked man's right hand darted forward with surprising speed and sprayed a mist in Wilson's face. Wilson crumpled, caught by the masked man, dropping the broom. The masked man dragged Wilson to an office chair in the hallway, zip-tied him to it, and wheeled him down the hallway out of sight.

Taking The House, All Scoped Out

House stared out the window with his small telescope at the seven bikers on the highway. They appeared to be slapping a man as they drove by him and cheering with each slap. House frowned. A chance readjustment showed it was a dead man. "Idiots," he muttered. One of the men miscalculated and came away with a bite. The cheering stopped as the bitten man dropped his motorcycle, angrily strode back to the dead man, and punched it, knocking it down. The bitten man stomped its neck, stilling it forever. A second biker stopped, dismounted, and walked over. The bitten man turned his back. The second biker reached up and neatly broke the neck of the bitten biker, then waited for him to fall and reached down and stabbed him up through the neck into the skull with something small. Chastened, the six bikers drove off. House heard a door shut. "Wilson?" he said.

"No," said the masked man right behind him, applying a medicine bottle to House's left shoulder blade as if it were a gun. "First things first, Dr. House. Confirm the name of the woman downstairs." He poised with the spray vial in his hand for House to breathe.

House frowned. "Why? What did—"

Between the words 'why' and 'what,' the masked man darted his hand around and sprayed the mist right up House's nostrils. Instead of collapsing immediately, House wobbled, eyes glazing. House opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. He reached for his cane and missed. He stared, unseeing, at the telescope in his other hand for a moment. He closed it, sagged a bit, and tossed it backwards, hitting the masked man in the face with it. Only then did House collapse. The masked man grumbled a bit, holding his face, then zip-tied House to his chair and wheeled him out into the hallway out of sight.

 _ **Well now. House's team is down. What does the masked man have in store for them? Please read and review. Thank you to FanDance for your kind if kinky words. Don't worry. House the Snark WILL be as insensitive and characteristically awful as I can manage.**_


	7. Will They Find Him Will They Mi-ind Him

_**Enjoying? I hope so. Just for clarity's sake, ONLY the characters named in the description are borrowed from writings I don't own. That does NOT include nickname-references that House uses to try to get a rise out of the masked man. Anybody may mention them as a mere reference, regardless of copyright law. So, is Negan's patrol getting too close? How is House going to treat his kidnapper? What's the masked man got going on? Hmmm . . . This is in two parts.**_

WILL THEY FIND THEM—

Six bikers rolled up to stop by a dirt track that turned off the highway. The biggest biker came strolling forward with a sneer on his face and a snarl in his voice. "Dooby?"

"Right there, Ben." Dooby, adjusting the bandanna around his face, nodded and pointed at a wrecked Nissan by the intersection with its trunk ajar. The driver of the car was a dead man wearing a football helmet with a broken ski through his chest that stuck through the steering wheel and out the shattered windshield. "Those funny tracks? Yeah. They pick up again right there. Whatever that was, it drove in this way and out again, headed west. Stopped there for a few minutes on the way out. Probably the same people cleared that bridge we blocked." Dooby dismounted, walked over to the Nissan's trunk. He opened the trunk and pulled out a medicine bottle. "Hmp. 'Vicodin.' For Gregory House for pain."

Ben straightened. "House?! Step back, Dooby. Careful like. Negan said he's the guy sets traps for us. Wants his dead head still growlin'." Ben stepped forward, picked up a small piece of dirty cellophane. He squinted at it. "Who's from Jersey?"

One biker paused, then held up a hand, "Not born and raised—been there a lot."

Ben handed him the scrap of cellophane. "Cigarettes from Jersey, right?"

The biker squinted at the scrap. "Yeah, think so. Bit of a haul!"

Ben took the medicine bottle out of Dooby's hand. "What is this, fifteen years old? Looks in awful good shape. This from Jersey, too." He shook his head. He pulled out a walkie. "Ben, checkin' in. We had to put down Jack. His job's open. Odd tracks off the highway and back on, headed north. Dooby found drugs with House's name on it. Location code one-thirty-eight." He listened to the static for a moment and heard a voice cut in. "Orders are find him but be careful, Ben, and check in a lot. He's killed about forty of our guys. One bottle for his growling head. Six bottles for him alive but bloodied up."

Ben nodded. "I'm gonna check why he went off the highway. He may be gone, but Dooby's good. I'm for findin' out where he was."

 _ **Uh—hmm. All plans CAN go awry, but did the masked man plan for Ben's contingent to be headed backwards or forwards along House's 'trail?' Who's smoking? WTF? Anyway, this next part is what most of us have eagerly awaited.**_

WILL HE MI—IND HIM—

House forced his eyes into focus. A masked man dressed all in black, thin-looking clothing with reinforced boots, yellow dishwashing gloves, and a black plastic hazmat apron. The gauntlets and apron were spattered with gore. The man sat on the edge of a recliner. House tested his wrists and ankles against the zip ties holding him to the office chair. He looked around at the unfamiliar, unfinished walls. He looked back at the masked man. "Why are you wearing a mask? That's kind of pointless these days."

"I have some things I need you to do, Dr. House."

"If you cut my hands free I could unwrap a Luden's for you."

"I've kidnapped your friends."

"Ricola, then?"

"I've not done any LASTING harm to them yet."

"Maybe you have some honey, lemon juice, and rum? I could stir it."

"The woman, Ann, she asked about you."

"I wouldn't recommend lemons from across the Atlantic. Too expensive. Oh, wait! Money's not a problem anymore."

"Wilson asked that I not torture him. Very politely."

"He should probably do a throat culture on you, make sure it's not strep."

The masked man stood. "If you can't be troubled to really talk to me, I could just turn one of you over to Negan's men."

House frowned. "So you DON'T work for Negan? That's good. Kind of hard to divide three hostages in HALF."

"Not really. I do have a bone saw. Perhaps your leg won't hurt anymore if both are cut off? He has a bounty on you. Legs are not required."

"He'd make you give him half your mask. Which half will you give him?"

"He doesn't know I exist."

"If you give one of us to him, he will."

"He'll assume you're lying. You didn't part on good terms."

House smiled. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I have NEVER parted on good terms."

"And you've never been known to pass up a challenging problem to solve. I have between two and twelve of them, depending on the solutions to the first two."

House blinked. "Wilson ratted on me, didn't he? You said you did no lasting harm to him."

The masked man brushed a bit of gore from his gloves onto the concrete floor. "Not yet."

House frowned. "This doesn't seem personal to you." He paused. He looked down at his pockets and noted his pockets had no bulge. "You've taken my Vicodin."

"I moved it to a new bottle."

"Why would you do that? That bottle had sentimental value."

"I left it as a clue that you really are still alive. And that you might be here."

House made a worried look for the first time. "He knows that. Ohh—what do you WANT, anyway?!"

"Your cooperation. You solve the puzzles I give you, and no harm comes to your friends. You don't cause problems, and I'll give you Vicodin on top of basic necessities."

"I HAD Vicodin."

"I'll be blunt, then. You don't irritate me, and I won't WITHHOLD Vicodin."

House paused. "I'm really just a junkie. If it's the last published Ken Ken, you're out of luck. My subtraction's rusty."

The masked man stepped toward the door.

"What happens when I can't solve your problems?"

"You'll show me why. When I'm satisfied, I'll give you the next problem. When our business is concluded, I'll return you to where you were. If you behaved, I won't lead Negan to you as I move on."

"Do I get visitation rights?"

"Only Wilson, only when I say so, and only as long as you behave."

"I actually need his help to solve problems."

"Ann Gee tried to claim her name was Dr. Gina House. Said it explained her tattoo. When pressed, however, she couldn't name but one of the arm bones. She's the least intellectual of you three and concocted a believable lie about imaginary printers' mistakes in Trenton applying the wrong photo and reinterpreting a ten-year-old tattoo in the spur of the moment. I don't think you'll actually need anyone's help. Cut yourself loose when the timer goes off." The masked man stepped forward, tossed a set of fingernail clippers onto House's lap, fastened a small device to the zip tie around House's right wrist, and walked to a modified storm door. He opened it, exited, closed it, locked it, and closed the door outside it.

A few moments later, the timer went off, cutting the zip tie holding his right wrist to the chair. House cut himself loose, stood, picked up his cane from where it was leaning on the armrest, limped to the storm door, checked the knob, and found it locked. He turned to face the rest of the room. Something was behind the chair he'd been sitting on. He limped forward for a look. Three copier paper boxes were stacked behind the chair he'd woke up in. Each one had a second lid around its base. Each box was labeled with a letter. He pulled the lid off box 'A' to find a tray of generic office supplies, two days' worth of random cans of food, a wrapped sandwich, a can opener, some utensils, a clear plastic bottle containing six Vicodin, a bottle of water, a package of zip ties, a sealed envelope, a timer counting down from sixteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds . . . and a spray vial. Taking a Vicodin immediately, he tore open the envelope. It read:

'When the timer goes off, you have two full minutes to resume your first chair, zip tie your left hand and feet to the chair, and spray yourself in the lower face with the sleep agent. Box 'A' will remain your personal locker. You may notice I have sewn your pocket openings shut and removed the linings. Boxes 'B' and 'C' contain transcripts to decode, references, and technological aids. Your chamber pot, trashcan, and hot plate are in the corner. Clean up your own messes or I will leave your food in the messes or your chamber pot, without the packaging. -X'

House tried the first chair, found it bolted to the floor, leaned on the stack of boxes, stabilized them with his cane, and pushed them all to the recliner, hopping awkwardly. He started to use the nail clippers to open the zip tie package, then raggedly tore the edges, ripping a piece of plastic out, and tossed the package onto the chair. He turned the spray vial upside down on the scrap of plastic and balanced it in the lid of box 'A' on the floor next to the recliner. He sat down and started skimming the documents while sharpening a pencil.

 _ **Now, what's HE up to? Please read and review.**_


	8. Will He Learn About The Star

_**These (one before, this one, and the next passage in the works) took a lot of editing because I had to remove most of my preachiness about PBM's. I originally had this weighty metaphor of undead corporate-type decoys that just didn't work. Just for clarity, the business named Corporate Somatic Material Solutions is completely made up. There isn't much need of a separate drug distribution company, since drugs don't take up that much space. It was easier, though, than finishing researching how drugs really ARE stored. It was also better, in my opinion, than risking publicizing it and causing drugs to be even more expensive for the additional security that would be required if everyone knew just how easy it might be to make off with some. Personally, I hope that PBM's (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) die a rapid, but horrible death and do not stand up again. Money grubbers of every stripe do horrible damage to every capitalist society, but there are always going to be too many ways to legally lie, cheat, and steal as long as we try to handle human nature with the law. That's it for now. Consider my soap box put away.**_

WILL HE LEARN ABOUT THE STAR?

House's eyes snapped open. The masked man sat across from him in the recliner. The masked man pointed at a copier paper box beside the recliner labeled 'A2.' "Probably not your favorites, but I do appreciate your following instructions. My cause is important enough that I cannot afford to take too many risks."

House's eyes narrowed. "I'd like to know what that cause IS before making any real progress, Xavier. Call it my inner Oppenheimer."

"Those transcripts are data bursts which may include the location of NORAD. I very much wish to discover whether there is a living pro tempore to govern the United States, or whether we will be holding a brand new general election as things improve."

House blinked. "Improve? How exactly are things going to improve, Xander? As the dead thin out, so will the ways to survive. Do you mean the dead dying out or us? Both are going to happen approximately together."

"The second problem, which I've left behind your chair, is all the data I've compiled on how to solve the dead problem."

"Most people just stab them in the head?"

"To make them stop rising."

"Ohhh. Yeah. Why didn't I think of that?" House made a mock shocked expression.

"I'm sure you've already wondered. Likely though, you didn't have my resources."

House made a face. "I can see where some nice toys would come in handy, but they're not going to be enough, Mr. X-man."

"X-man?"

House held up his empty left ring finger. "Hey, I've got an ex-wife." He held up different finger.

"I'm preparing a lab for you to work in. After you've read my work, I'll be open to suggestions that I may be able to fulfill. It looks like you may have written a short program. Something is running on one of the computers I left you."

"Three programs are running. I tend to multi-task."

"What are they doing?"

"I snapped a few pictures with the digital camera. One of the programs is looking for any visual pattern based on the idea that one of the codes may correspond to a screen shot or video. I haven't bothered with a full-on text analysis yet, because I don't have a digital copy, and that's clearly the plan."

"Your friends are scanning the pages into a new device. Once I've checked it, it will become a read-only file cloned multiple times for your convenience."

House nodded. "The second program is searching through the devices' memories for anything about you. I like to know who I'm working for. Where you bought them, why you picked them. These are state-of-the-art even though they seem to run on DOS rather than Windows, Mr. X-factor."

"They run on DOS because they have to last, and we don't have memory space to waste. There's nothing on them about me because I didn't buy them or pick them."

"You BUILT them?!" House's eyes glazed over.

"I made these, copying some made for me. I'm a fair technician, even if I'm not that original with the designs."

"They're cylindrical."

"They were designed to be part of a vehicle."

"Why do they smell like apples? Not even Apple computers smelled like apples."

"That's the batteries. I had to pick a readily available acid to make them work. In this case, the solution vinegars before the charge expires. It does poison the apple vinegar, but the smell deodorizes the power source."

"You have a cider press and reclamation plant, Mr. X-ray Fish?"

"In a manner of speaking. I put dead on treadmills hooked to static generators to generate power. They occasionally grind the apples, too."

House goggled at him. "I've heard of green energy, but PUKE green?"

"We're getting off the subject. What about the third program?"

House nodded. "Obviously, we may have to do some data mining at some point. I've written a probability generator to help calculate how long to go through the average server backup based on presence of search terms."

The masked man picked up the only computer with a blinking light. He pressed several buttons. "Your search terms are 'naked, bare, lady, woman, girl, bitch' and 'ass?' You're searching for pornography?"

"Everyone needs a hobby, Mr. Rated-X."

The masked man paused. "The search terms are interchangeable?"

"And the program tweakable. If you get to certain server backups in Trenton, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Louisville, or Phoenix, I could actually have you check my work with these search terms. I'm aware of a way to beta test. To 'X' them out, as it were. Am I getting warmer?"

"You specifically know some of the porn there."

"EX-actly, Mr. Trebek!"

The masked man nodded. "Wilson said you might be very productive if I allowed more irrelevant-seeming activity. It seems he was right."

"You want me because I'm sharp. And everyone knows that 'all work and no play' thing."

"That aphorism has 'dull' as boring rather than dim-witted."

"Semantics. Idiots, boredom, same thing really. So. I've done some work. What about talking a bit, Harpo Marx?"

"You're not a social person."

"I'm an interested third party. And if anyone needs to SPEND time with a party, it would be you, Groucho." He waggled his eyebrows and tapped an imaginary cigar in the air.

"I have limited social interests."

"That I could guess, Mr. Quaid."

"I don't wish to be known."

"Hence, the mask, Mr. Li. You move like a martial artist. Not a lot of wasted effort. You don't have anything personal against me yet, which means we'd probably never met before you kidnapped me. Yet you find me and already know my name and stuff about me. The only people that know me that I know are still alive work for Negan—"

"I'll see you in eighteen hours." The masked man attached the timed cutter to the zip tie on House's right wrist. He stepped back and turned toward the door.

House glanced down to see the fingernail clippers between his thighs on the chair. "You know it would be a bigger incentive to give me clues to who YOU are."

"I'll consider it."

"You're not fondling me in my sleep, are you?"

The masked man didn't even slow down, just didn't reply. House watched him lock the door, turn, and walk down a glass hallway with drywall on both sides of it before the lights in the hallway went out from the other side of the passage. House frowned. When he'd fallen asleep, the doorway had looked completely different. He looked at the walls. He startled. The room was a different shape, less square than before, and had a small kitchenette in the corner beside his chamber pot and trashcan. His eyes darted to the base of the recliner. The timer went off. House cut himself free, picked up his cane, and stood. He limped to the door, tried it, and limped back to the recliner. He used the handle to lift the foot holder. He smiled wickedly at the small food can covered with plastic with the tiny puddle of sleep agent under the recliner. He limped to the boxes behind the chair. He opened Box A. Inside was a timer counting down from seventeen hours, forty-two minutes.

It was the usual—limited supply of Vicodin, though more than before, sleep agent, envelope, office supplies, and a different random mix of canned goods. No sandwich. He pushed boxes A-E over to the recliner, and opened box A2. A charged i-pod, some expired cookies, and some Jolly Ranchers. He dry-swallowed a Vicodin, popped a Jolly Rancher in his mouth, began collection of some more sleep agent the way he had yesterday, and stuck the earbud in his ear for some rousing music, examining the playlist for a moment. He opened the envelope. It read:

'Same conditions and instructions as before. All clear progress and basic compliance considered rewardable. Avoid excessive noise till further notice. We will be having visitors between now and five hours from now that I must discourage, maim, or kill, and killing will bring more of them. I do not wish to enlist your friends' aid in killing or appeasing them, though it would be easier, so keep in mind that quiet will assist me. -X'

 _ **Oh, boy! What about those visitors? How good IS Dooby? Consider this a bonus look at the pursuers, as I hadn't planned to tell you more about them yet until the last page was written.**_

Who-oooa! Getting Closer, Coming Nigh

Ben and Dooby and two other bikers pulled to a stop beside the smashed drugstore. Dooby pointed at the place. "We should look to see if they've any food. We're runnin' low an' we still gotta get some back to Croc and Batter."

Ben made a rude sound. "They can go hungry on the way back! If they'd done what I said, they wouldn't be laid up. Lucky those traps didn't kill 'em. We helped 'em up onto that roof. We'll go back for 'em, don't worry. You say this is where they were?"

Dooby frowned. "This is where somethin's wrong with this trail, man. See how it don't match up there? It drove over its own tracks, turned around and went back, but it was a couple inches off suddenly. You see that line in the silt over there at the mismatch? It's like somebody hosed away the tracks and then drove over them again, so we would think they didn't drive somewhere in town or to'ards the river. Bridge over it's out, though. Like we would think they DIDN'T go somewhere? They made more silt for the new tracks. I've never seen that. There's somethin' round here he tried to hide. Spread out. Look for one of those stains. Or some recent tracks. Same as before—don't FUKKIN' TOUCH NUTHIN'!"

The four men spread out and started looking in various directions. Ben whistled and pointed. A foot path stretched between two buildings and ranged into the woods. Dooby hustled up. After a moment he nodded. "Cane tracks, limpin' here. Yeah. Different shoes, but, yeah, he was here." Dooby looked at the trail ahead. "Footbridge across the river there looks like it leads uphill. Can't see what's up there."

They walked for a bit. They crossed the footbridge to find a small area of very sticky mud. Dooby stooped to take his boots off at the end of it. Ben stopped him. "Don't. You know House sets traps."

The four bikers walked on in silence, then saw the four-story building with the odd sign. Dooby shook his head. "What's 'somatic?' This looks like an office building." They walked into the lobby. "Why don't they have ceiling tiles?" said one biker. The nearest one shrugged. They walked up to the bulletin board, only one of them peeking at the thumping behind the desk and the vibrating office chair. In mismatched plastic letters a wall-mounted message board read: 'I've already taken everything of value here, Negan's men, except for a bottle of aspirin across the room. You will definitely need it if you try to follow us and succeed in living.'

Dooby pointed through a badly smashed door with a sign that said 'Corporate Samples' at empty shelves. Ben nodded grimly. One biker noticed the bottle of aspirin on a windowsill, barely in reach. He took hold of it. There was a click. The sprinklers turned on, spraying the bikers. Dooby's eyes went wide. "Rubbin' alcohol! GET OUT!"

The bikers as one turned to the door, and the nearest one flung it open. Flames licked out at the bikers from the front wall with an audible 'Whump!'

With charred clothing, missing or singed eyebrows, and blistered faces and hands, the bikers stomped out, cursing. No one was dead. Downhill and across the footbridge, the bikers found a tube of Vaseline at the ruined drugstore. Dooby was almost done treating everyone when Ben saw him pause and frown.

"What?" Ben looked rather angry.

Dooby shook his head. "Nothin' I guess. These traps seemed different. Nobody died. Two separate triggers. Like somebody else helped him. Then there's that 'don't follow me' threat. Maybe he's goin' somewhere makes him an easy target?"

Ben went very still. He turned to the worst of the blistered bikers. "You lost a lotta skin back there. What do you think?"

The biker scowled, grimacing through the pain it caused. "You got a potato peeler? I'm thinkin' about skinnin' me a PERSON and fryin' it up and FEEDin' it to 'im! I heard of a Reuben! I'll make him a FRIED SKIN and REUBEN ALCOHOL SAMMICH!"

Dooby held up a finger. "That's RU—"

Ben elbowed him.

"Right! That's right!" Dooby held his elbowed side for a moment.

"Whatcha go'n' use as BREAD, huh?" Ben asked.

"His SHOES!"

Satisfied, Ben nodded. "All right then. Dooby? You said he went west. What's west?"

Dooby pulled a rumpled, charred pamphlet out of a pocket and held it up. "Corp'rate S'matic Ma-terial S'lutions." He unfolded it and held it up for all to see. "Town of Winchester. Next office up. Got the address and everythin' right here. We could take more dirt tracks insteada highways, maybe make up time. I know some a that country."

Ben pulled out his radio. "Ben here, checkin' in. Found another trap, but nobody's even badly hurt this time. Headin' up to Winchester to head him off. We know where he's GOIN'."

 _ **Ohh, boy. The most memorable moment in all cartoon history for me is the Pink Panther using a stamper and inkpad to lay down a fake trail to get the detective to follow 'him.' I guess you can all figure why that's relevant . . .**_


	9. HouseSaysNotAGermNoLiesWilmaPetersOpensE

_**First things first. A/N a bit longer here, as I have to talk through some rationalization. Luckily, I see a way around the problems I've inherited. When I began this I had no idea that so much glaring medical error had been the producers' intent. It IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TAKE WHAT WE SAW IN THE PILOT TO MEAN WHAT THE PRODUCERS INDICATE AND LEAVE IT AT FACE VALUE IF THE BELIEVABILITY 'LEVEL' OF HOUSE IS TO BE MAINTAINED. Let's start with the timeline they've given for Rick's awakening. His wife's pregnancy, his facial hair and wilted flowers, and empty I.V. bag and missing hospital staff, flickering lights, and Rick's been alone with no nutrition or hydration for 45 days? As House would put it, "You're lying." People have speculated about Georgia heat speeding the wilting of flowers and maybe a phantom nurse taking care of Rick and leaving no sign. Then there's the completely irrational idea that somehow a sheriff, barring media non-disclosure and timing, would have not been informed that a pandemic was beginning? "Watch for out-of-state visitors? Call the CDC if you see the following?" For Rick to have come to and been able to walk with no appreciable muscle atrophy and not passing out trying to walk out of his own room, means he likely WASN'T comatose for longer than forty-eight hours after the last I.V. fluid dripped into his veins. If we allow that Rick was in the hospital for three weeks' time BEFORE Shane came for him, which seems too long for how well he walked, that's still unlikely he could stand up without help. No medical shaving pattern or markers leads us away from an extra surgery which WOULD make his recovery more feasible. Data from the spin-off, FTWD, is available, but I can't even stay awake to watch it. It's horrible what happens to a production when there are characters in search of a story, or at least a single author. Most of the fanfiction I've read, even the awful stuff, was more riveting at least.**_

 _ **I'm sticking to Rick being in for a hair over two weeks before (dialogue) and two days after (hydration) Shane's final visit with my solution 'clouding' the timeline afterwards. It's on the edge of medical possibility, which is a theme for Rick, with the following explanations.**_

 _ **The best evidence for my solution is the military. They weren't acting like deployment had happened long enough ago that they could be organized and prepared, which should have been the case, based on the timeline on TWD's website. I propose the following:**_

 _ **Someone put something in the ventilation system in the confusion slightly before the military began leaving the hospital. Something psychoactive but not very psychedelic for Rick. Something that might work a little bit like Haldol. It caused hallucinations in those allergic to it, and removed temporarily the capacity to deny reality even a little for everyone else. Under ridiculous stress and super-sharp perception of grim reality, military discipline goes out the window. Add to that a few of them are shooting at shadows of things that aren't even there. That would explain easily the actions we saw, including shooting living innocents. This ONE thing could have caused everything else . . .**_

 _ **At some point before Shane's final visit, those drugs affected a military doctor in the hospital. He performed an extra surgery on Rick without proper prep (shaving) to clean up prior efforts. He injected Rick with a massive dose of nutrients and immune system boosters, maybe injecting them directly into Rick's I.V. system without proper labeling or charting. I picture him muttering to himself, "We NEED a new sheriff in town," while he played God and luckily didn't kill Rick. Vitamins in forms unfamiliar to the individual promote rapid facial hair growth or fingernail growth or both.**_

 _ **The airborne drug combo was breathed in in slight amounts around Rick's cannula during and after his 'super-I.V.' To this day, he sometimes has hallucinations as bits of the drug work into his system during stressful times, as it is embedded in his fatty tissue reserve. He would be allergic to its effect on his brain. This explains Rick resuming mental health without psychiatric care or sufficient time for a nutritional change to 'jump-start' him.**_

 _ **That same combo did not noticeably affect Shane, as Shane happened to be the person in the hospital mostly immune to the drug, and it had been unevenly, but mostly, dispersed already.**_

 _ **Additionally, the drug happens to disagree with the preservatives sprayed on the flowers in Rick's room, causing premature wilting.**_

 _ **Rick was temporarily unable to wake during Shane's visit because the injected nutrients were at an end.**_

 _ **Rick, for the first time in his life, was experiencing a massive blood sugar crash because the injection was wearing off. He would essentially lose a year of his life, be comatose for several hours, and then sleep it off for a day or two.**_

 _ **His memory would be impaired in multiple ways, he would walk when maybe he shouldn't. He would come sharply awake, adrenaline pumping, probably have digestive distress and forget it.**_

 _ **This would mean time might have no meaning for him as his brain adjusted to the initial drug haze and nutritional loss. Then he could wander out of the hospital within a three-to-five-day period before reserve generator power appropriate for a trauma center or temporary military installation would run out, reeling from crisis to crisis, eating where he saw food.**_

 _ **At some point he would come to himself and have faulty, incomplete memories of what had happened. He could have lost ten days between each major memorable event during this walkabout.**_

 _ **This, while it clouds the timeline completely, seems reasonable to me. It clears up the worst timeline issues and medical impossibilities. Additionally, if the military had been instructed to mobilize at first as if it were drilling for disaster planning, it is at least somewhat more likely that Rick's town would have been uninformed a bit longer than others. Other issues will be dealt with in story. I really believe that this is the only elegant solution to the timeline issues anyway. What's even better, a well-meaning psychologist might have had a fallacious but understandable reason to have done it: Everyone must have been battling a psychedelic that had been dispersed the same way, since he was seeing that he and everyone else believed the impossible—that the dead were walking! So I'm taking my explanation as 'sub-canon,' or gunpowder, making the canons WORK, and running with it.**_

House Says Not A Germ, No Lies

Wilson was sitting at a desk with a charred PDR, a worn anatomy textbook, a pencil, a legal pad, and a frown. The masked man walked in, looked up at the clock, and spoke. "It's after five. You should go to dinner. I could smell what Ann is cooking from the hallway. It smells good."

Wilson looked up. "This is harder than I thought. I might be willing to put in some extra time. Obviously this is important. I've never really had a student like you. You're more of a teacher. I feel like I've learned more about what I was doing than when I did it. —But this is a lot harder."

"You haven't thought about it this way before."

"Never! Sensible, though. A doctor's apprenticeship refurbishment is the sort of thing that needed to be a part of disaster planning. I've made notes on some more things I'll need to check on in the lab. I hope there are other doctors trying to do the same thing. There are going to be things I can't remember. It's a pity that library burned. I could've used a thesaurus at least."

The masked man handed Wilson another partially burned book. "Neighboring house had this. This is a bit more than 'T' to 'Z.' I may be able to scout a bit more tomorrow."

Wilson nodded. "Thanks. You might try to convince Ann to scavenge with you as a lookout. She does very well, actually, and she doesn't wish to be caught by Negan's men. House said they would most likely pass her around and not be—um, considerate?"

The masked man nodded. "I'll visit her and ask. Did you hear anything about an hour ago?"

Wilson shook his head. "Did you have to kill any of them?"

"No, they were fooled. They left without even going past the lobby and the fake drug display. They're more foolish than I thought. They're headed west into some major trouble. All of the larger, unmanaged herds are that way."

"How did you fake the dust?"

"Blower motor aimed at the ceiling for a few seconds at a time. All the dust I left up there came down."

"What did you need all those ceiling tiles FOR, anyway?"

"Soundproofing. It took two floors' worth just for him, but no one can hear House from outside, as far as I can tell. I haven't told him that."

Wilson nodded. "The less he knows, the better. Except what I'm doing. He might understand that. Do you really think you can build a good enough lab for him to find the animation germ?"

The masked man nodded. "Yes, I can do that."

"No, I can't do that!" House was shaking his head, looking at the masked man in the recliner. "I'd love to tell you that I'm smart enough to outdo the old CDC's, but it wouldn't matter if I COULD. I'm sorry. I can't help you with this. I'm making headway on the decoding, though, Mr. Churchill."

"Yes, I looked at that. Your newest program should have the decryption done in a mere what, decade?"

"Hey, this level of encoding wasn't allowed outside the United States. In theory, I could be arrested by expats, right? You're lucky I'm not a staunch loyalist, Mr. Washington."

"You're telling me you won't even TRY to work in the lab?"

"On other things, maybe. But I don't want to lie to you—I really believe you might hurt my friends. The dead aren't rising because they caught something, or they're infected with something, Captain Picard."

"Why, then?"

House looked at the masked man funny. "I could try to prove to you that there ISN'T some bug responsible. But I'd need some incentive, since it's a waste of our time and resources."

"What about a serum to prevent turning if you're bitten?"

"That would require that it BE a bug, for a serum to work. Do you have trouble understanding that? That's the reason the CDC failed! That's the reason WHO failed. Not the British band 'the Who;' they didn't fail. The World Health Organization."

The masked man paused. "Okay, prove it can't be a bug."

"Will you tell me who you are, Mr. Jagger?"

"No. I might give you some hints. Small ones."

"Like?"

"I knew who you were before, though we'd never met."

"BEFORE before?" House leaned forward a bit, breath catching.

"Yes."

"How? You own a few hospitals? Build a few? You're the least lazy guy I've ever met."

"What will you need to do what I've asked?"

"Gene splicer, electron microscope, mass spec, sterilizing agent in bulk, general medical lab supplies, and three human volunteers we don't want to live, Mr. Mengele."

"No living humans. And you'll have to make do with regular optics for now."

"REGULAR optics?"

"The equipment I'm assembling barely tops four hundred times magnification. I do have some old-fashioned microtomy supplies. Eventually I'll get some immersion oil and get us to a thousand-ex and better."

"Candle wax?"

"Paraffin. A few homemade kits."

House shook his head. "Well, we ARE in the Dark Ages again. You have a dry erase board? Markers? Medical mannequins?"

"Yes."

House frowned deeply. "Then I'll see what I can put together."

"Starting with the mass spec. It's still in the shipping crates." The masked man fastened the timer to House's right-hand zip tie, and House swung his head to the left violently. A small baggie threaded to House's hair lifted out of his collar on his right side and burst. The fumes sprayed out on the masked man's face. The masked man smiled noticeably and stepped back, allowing most of the fumes to dissipate. He walked to the door, exited, and held the door slightly ajar.

House shook his head, blinking. "What do you—work for the government? You didn't inhale, Mr. Clinton?"

"I've built up an immunity to a number of toxins and drugs. If you ACTUALLY behave from now on, instead of plotting, I may let you work in the lab as soon as tomorrow, as well as visit with Wilson a bit. Please continue your work. There's a plate of venison from Ann in the kitchenette. I removed the lockpick from it, so it should be safe to eat now. Oh, and remember, you're not just helping me. You may be saving the human race, including Wilson and Ann and yourself. Wouldn't it be nice to be a hero instead of a misunderstood and hated genius?" He locked up as the timer cut House's zip tie and drew a curtain across the new glass door.

 _ **The masked man has shown a lot of patience. At some point, everyone changes tactics at least a little . . .**_

Wilma Peters Opens Eyes

"House? . . . House?" Wilson was tapping on a glass. House's eyes popped open. He wasn't bound to the chair he was in. Wilson and the masked man were sitting across a glass wall from him. House got up, picking up the cane, limped the perimeter of the cell he was in, noting the white board with markers and eraser, and examined each wall in turn. Nodding to himself, he returned to the chair and noted that it was bolted to the floor. "Okay, I'm here. What?"

Wilson blinked. "I'm glad you're all right? Our host wants us to speak on the topic of the animation—phenomenon."

House nodded. "Thank you for not calling it a germ, Wilson. Why don't you tell Agent Starling there about what we've already been through?" He limped to a corner and stared at it for a moment.

Wilson squinted, then smiled faintly and nodded. "We were camping in Pennsylvania near a diner when we first heard about it. Odd sicknesses were being reported. Anything unknown with a fever was to be reported to the CDC. Then it was any dead bodies to be treated as infectious and burned. We heard the instructions change twice in one special news bulletin while House was complaining about a wet t-shirt contest."

"They'd rousted us earlier just for listening to the news. We bought coffee. And we missed that contest completely." House turned a medical mannequin's back to Wilson and the masked man. He waved as if scolding the masked man, "No peeking at him! He's shy."

"A dead woman staggered out of the woods and tried to eat me." Wilson frowned at the memory.

"And not in the good way, either."

"House!"

The masked man shook his head. "How did she present?"

House beamed. "She presented with a red raincoat!" He grabbed a marker and wrote backwards for himself on the glass so the others could read, 'red raincoat,' at eye level. He underlined it.

". . . He's—telling the truth. Wilma Peters had been missing for a week. That had been on the news too. Last seen wearing a red raincoat. A boyfriend who worked as a bouncer in a bar a half mile from where we were camped had reported her missing."

"Boyfriend the prime suspect?" House perked up, watching the masked man speak.

Wilson shrugged. "One of them, probably. The bouncer boyfriend and a former boyfriend were both claiming she'd chosen them over the other one. She was last seen leaving the bar, bouncer inside, her ex at the bar across town."

The masked man nodded. "So you recognized her from the news."

House cleared his throat, writing backwards on the glass. "A week's worth of decomposition in a shallow grave. Local mud in her hair. Small indent in the skull up at the coronal joint. I wasn't interested in her torn clothing or missing shoes. I immediately wanted to know how she was walking around, Mr. Poirot." He had written 'week's rot, local mud, minor head trauma c.o.d.,' and 'walking while dead' under 'symptoms.'

Wilson grimaced. "He said 'Go buy a meat thermometer' and sat on her, staring, fascinated. The owner told me the cheap ones they used in the diner's kitchen wouldn't register below a hundred and forty. The gas station had some thermometers as accessories for the car but they had no probes attached. They wouldn't have been very accurate. I bought the high-end first-aid kit, and hurried back to him. He had her tied up with my clothes by then. He'd cut them up."

"Needed to restrain her. We didn't need to be hors d'oeuvres, Mr. Ramsey. You never wore those dress shirts ANYWAY, Wilson. The body just kept straining at the bonds, never stopping." He wrote, 'inhuman stamina, no pain response.' He stared annoyed, at having written the 'h' forwards for himself.

"What did you tie her to?"

"A broken pallet that was lying out back of the truck parking lot—at first. When she began to break that, I tied all four of the edge boards to a tree. I took the bodies' temp and found it to be about seventy degrees Fahrenheit, give or take. Absurd. Wilson wanted to call the CDC right away, but I was a fugitive. He let me use some gloves after I washed up and sent him for more tools, Mr. Goodwrench." He wrote, 'temperature of friction of movement' as an explanation next to 'abt 70 deg. F.'

"Tools?" The masked man approached the glass.

"Handyman kit and garbage bags, Lysol and hand wipes, and some scented candles," said Wilson, "And I bought a case of beer to trade to a trucker for his toolkit. I didn't understand why he didn't just buy the beer."

House rolled his eyes. "Truckers CAN be underage drinkers. Or banned from places that sell. It didn't occur to you, having grown up with the drinking age being younger. You probably broke the law, and I'm glad. I'd still be waiting for those tools." He gestured expansively.

"What did you do?"

"Verified her liver temp. Same as ambient air. No pumping in the heart when I cut it out. I'd never seen a heart with blood gelled from the cold in it. I was figuring out my next move when we were rudely interrupted." He added, 'dead a week' to the glass, still ignoring the board. He capped the marker.

"By who?"

"A well-meaning Amish woman. So you weren't in the medical field before. How did you know me, Howdy Doody?"

"I had reason to believe that a certain someone would poison a certain water supply. I needed people I could contact or abduct to identify and counter the toxins at speed with minimum of patient loss. I obtained your criminal record and copies of a Detective Tritter's professional documentation of your exploits. Case notes, submitted reports, original notebook entries. He wrote that if you could be nice to people he'd be able to admire you. That you were the most brilliant person he'd ever tried to catch."

House's eyes were wide. "NSA, CIA, Secret Agent Man?"

"Not important. Would this Amish woman have been 'Ann,' your group's butcher?"

House and Wilson traded a look. "You DID find Pete," said Wilson, "Is he alive? I'd like to wish him well and good luck not getting killed by Negan."

The masked man sat down again. "Fine; you tell me about Ann, Wilson, and I'll tell you both what I know about Pete."

 _ **In case any of you are wondering, I don't think House would give up baiting the masked man by giving him random contextual names. I also don't think the masked man would give anything up yet. Please read and review. Please also include anything I may have left out in my believability solution. Just out of curiosity, who likes my new term 'gunpowder' working off the pun 'making canon work?'**_


	10. BenIsOutForH'sBludDoobySeesTracksI'T'Mud

_**I suppose I should tell you all why I'm falling back to only posting once a week on Fridays. It so happens that right now, I'm not only working nights full time and watching my kids during the day, but also? As long as the weather is good enough for the kids to go to school, someone's building a frankenmansion next door. It's loud now, but will be ugly forever. Being gentrified sucks. It's time for a more 'fluffy' chapter, so:**_

 _ **Well now, how's the other half living? All characters not Negan or Darryl in this chapter are my own creation.**_

Ben Is Out For House's Blood, Dooby Sees Tracks In The Mud

Five bikers on four bikes came roaring down the hillside. Singed beards and dusty, improvised bandages were sported by all. Dooby, the smallest of them, rode bitch behind Ben. The motorcycles pulled to a stop beside a farmhouse. The bikers rapidly turned them off without any revving and dismounted. Ben shook himself a bit and straightened. He held up hands for silence, scowling as the blisters on his hands hurt. He grimaced. He waved one biker toward the barn and folded his arms, scowling and gritting his teeth. He turned to Dooby and nodded.

Dooby stretched a bit, nodding back, and began studying the ground a bit away from the motorcycles. After a bit he walked back to Ben, visibly cowed. "Dust too wind-blown. Can't tell ya much. Was a pick-up or an old car here but not for a long time. Some horses here too about the same time. Woulda grazed uphill or maybe past the farmhouse if there's a creek. Looks like more downhill past the farmhouse."

Ben nodded, pulled out a pair of broken binoculars. He held them together and stared to the north and the northwest. "More guardrails," he grumbled. "Dead're walkin' all over the interstate anyway, kinda swirly like you said. Flock of birds." He pointed to some telephone wires leading from the farmhouse to a set of poles and into the woods. "Whatcha think?"

Dooby nodded. "Bound to be a way through there back to a highway. Maybe a security fence to break. Tools maybe along the way?"

Ben pointed wordlessly uphill.

"That farm equipment? That stuff runs on diesel most a the time. Doubt we want that. We want diesel? They got pumps a that everywhere."

"What about the blades? Could we run that through the dead?"

Dooby blinked. "Oh. If we get it started, we could sure try. Won't turn over. That's a combine."

"What chou mean, won't turn over? We ain't tried to start it yet." Ben looked at Dooby funny.

"I mean the dead can't rock it over. If the blades'll turn through the dead, we could plow the whole interstate. One to drive it, two to knock off any climbers, two of us on bikes to help 'em down 'n' get away if it goes bad."

Ben nodded. "I'm sendin' Batter back."

Dooby looked back at Batter. "He IS lookin' bad. Leg swellin' up. Jaw swollen shut. You got a fever, Batter?" Dooby looked at the sweat glistening over "RBI," the tat on Batter's forehead, where Batter's nickname came from and frowned, vaguely remembering a rumor that the letters were actually the initials of someone who went to prison in Batter's stead and died there.

Batter, scowling badly enough to sweat worse, nodded. Ben clapped him on the back. "I'm gonna send you back the way we came with the proof we're on House's trail. Got no spare radio for you—not that you can really talk anyway. Can you make it?" Batter nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead tattoo.

"I'm sorry about Croc. Never knew him to get sick. Anyhow. No need to turn off at that drug place House was at unless you just need a rest. You've been a trooper. Workin' like a Trojan. Have Negan set you up with the new doctor, and tell him I might be expandin' our territory while I find House. I'll just add this duffel on your bike. Soup to drink." Ben pulled out a medicine bottle and a piece of a cigarette wrapper from a pocket and stuffed them in the outer pocket of a duffel bag. He tied it on to Batter's bike and watched as Batter drove back uphill.

The biker sent to the barn came walking back, holding a pitchfork. "Some tools. Two dead horses. Somebody cut the meat out of 'em long enough ago the bugs are done with the rest." He handed Ben the pitchfork.

Ben nodded. "You two go up, see if you can start that combine. If it runs, we'll go mow down I-66 all the way to Winchester. If it don't, we might use the blades. Mount 'em on a car or somethin'. Dooby 'n' I'll clear the house." He waited till the two other bikers had started up the hill and turned to Dooby. "So, House prob'ly ain't set traps near here, right?"

"Not too likely he came this way, Ben. No recent tracks where we came in an' it's just MILES of country to get lost in through here. House seems t' like a ROOST, y'know? High ground."

Ben grunted and turned toward the farmhouse. They walked the twenty steps down the pavestones from the little gate. Ben drew a home-sharpened breadknife and a length of broomstick, leaving the pitchfork leaning on the outer doorframe. Dooby pulled out a mismatched pair of long screwdrivers. Ben tried the door. Finding it locked, he listened for a moment. "Sumpin' there," he muttered. He kicked in the door. A nearly skeletal dead man, tendons barely present, was trying to get up from the badly stained and partially rotted living room rug. Its left wrist broke, and it fell to the floor again. It tried again. A tendon snapped as it sat up, and its shoulders sagged enough to make the body look almost snakelike. Its right foot cracked, its left leg came out of the hip socket, and the whole thing fell again. Its jaw opened, shut, opened, shut, opened—

. . . and Ben stomped its neck. He looked at the stairs, mounded with broken furniture. He looked at the back door, blocked with about fifty heavy boxes. He looked at the windows, sturdily boarded up. "Shit," he said, and opened the first box he could reach, "Farmer's Almanac? Accounting Monthly? Shit! Nothin' worth lookin' at here without a load a work. I still hear somethin,' too!"

Dooby and Ben walked back out the front door. Ben looked up. "TURN!" he screamed.

. . . and the combine smashed through the parked motorcycles and into one side of the farmhouse as Ben and Dooby leapt away. The farmhouse collapsed, partially onto the combine. As the dust began to settle, Ben stormed up to the combine and kicked a panel, shaking with rage. "You—you—you—" he stopped and turned to look downhill. A herd five times as wide as the length of the former farmhouse was just seconds downhill from the wreck. The door to the combine opened. "My foot's stuck!" the biker hollered at Ben. The biker pointed at his bootlaces caught in a pedal. "Toss me a knife!" Ben reached up into the cab and pulled a lever instead. The combine's main blades came down, crushing the legs of twelve dead. Ben turned and gored three more through the mouth, felling them rapidly, while clubbing another. "Where's Rocky?" he belted out. "Oh." He saw Rocky's head and arms connected by the upper chest crawling downhill toward them.

"He fell under!" wailed the biker in the combine, yanking at his boot. He slammed the door, seeing two dead climbing up on the other side. Ben's club broke. Ben stabbed the nearest dead thing up under the chin with it as he backed toward the rear of the combine. Seeing them close on all sides, Ben body-checked the biggest one uphill, jumped onto it as it fell, and dashed between the others. As the hundreds of dead around rocked the combine loose of the farmhouse, Ben saw the biker in the combine cab, eyes bulged out, mouthing something he couldn't decipher. Then the combine coasted down over the edge of the hill out of sight, taking more dead with it. Ben turned to look at the utility pole clearing and saw the way blocked with dozens of dead coming toward him. He turned to the barn to see it collapse and the dead come walking through it. A chance parting of the dead walking gave Ben a view of a dead woman staggering toward him with a pitchfork protruding downward from her chest, as if someone had stabbed upwards . . . "Dooby!" Ben startled, seeing no one else alive anywhere near. He started running uphill, already out of breath.

He heard the combine crash a few seconds later, and, faintly, the screams of the trapped biker shortly after. The edges of Ben's vision looked—dark somehow. His left arm hurt so much he stopped swinging it. His lungs burned. He could hear his heart in his ears . . . The night passed, the sun rose to shine on Ben's gray, contorted face. His body had not a bite on it as he led the herd approximately east by southeast. The only signs of his cause of death? His right hand clamped around his left bicep and his left arm contorted around it to clutch his chest.

Pete was standing on the roof of a strip mall when Batter drove up to it. Pete waved. Batter stopped, stared for a moment, and came around to the ladder. Pete opened the ladder cover and stood back to let him up. "You the sentry relief?" Batter shook his head. "I been waitin' here for the sentry. There USED to be one here. Found some batteries for a radio. Rechargeables!" Batter stared at him for a moment. He pulled out an Etch-A-Sketch and crudely wrote, "I look for him 2."

Pete blinked. "You can't talk? I thought I seen you talk once."

Batter struggled with the knobs a moment, scowled, shook the toy clear, and started again. He wrote, "Sick, trap with rusty barb wire."

Pete looked at him in alarm. "Sick?! You got a fever?"

Batter nodded, shook the toy clear, and started again. He began writing crudely, "Lock-jaw" and was almost finished when he felt Pete's knife enter his back. He fell to all fours, cracking the toy on the catwalk.

"I'm sorry," said Pete, "I can't take a chance on you turnin' on me. Stabbed in the back should make you fall quick. Won't hurt after that. I'll cut your spine. You won't stand up after."

Batter shot Pete in the head with a small pistol. Pete fell down. Batter slowly got to his feet. He stomped Pete's neck. He started down the ladder—and fell a mere twenty feet, concussing himself on the way down.

It didn't hurt after that. But he did stand up after dying.

Negan looked grumpily at the casserole on his plate. "Out of oregano AND pasta, Viper?"

"Sorry, Negan. Just this."

"How dangerous IS one little strip mall? Pete goes completely MISSING, sentry's not checked in, patrol's not back, Ben's group out that way's not checked in—is somethin' goin' ON out there? Some a the boys are gonna really miss Dooby's work if he isn't back here by harvest time. Take the patrols in that area and bring 'em in closer. Have two of 'em help watch movin' the big guns to the next outpost on rotation."

Viper nodded. "Yeah, alright. Oh! We might ask for a worker or two with farm experience to keep it up till Dooby gets back. 'T'swut we had to do last big deer hunt, remember? Don't sweat it. Doob wouldn't miss it. He's a grower, a treehugger from way back. He's probably watchin' Ben's group right now, havin' a high old time just watchin' the action."

Dooby was high up, watching the action. Rocky's upper third HAD proven entertaining. Dooby was not, in fact, hugging a tree. He was hugging a telephone pole with his left arm, which had gone numb and cramped up in the cold morning air earlier. He had climbed right up the back of the nearest dead body at a bit of a run and leapt, after stabbing a dead woman clawing for him with a pitchfork and running all the way to the third pole, just inside the woods. He had expected to call out and draw the dead away from the combine, so Ben could get out whoever was inside and climb a tree to wait out Ben drawing them away with a motorcycle engine or something, the way they usually did it.

Unfortunately, the dead were coming out of the woods on both sides of the utility pole clearing and closing on him. Out of breath, he'd taken the leap of his life and climbed halfway up the pole. Then he'd heard the combine crash and the screaming biker trapped in the wreckage being eaten alive as the dead clawed their way in just far enough. Dooby had stayed there then, just waiting, while the dead reached fruitlessly for him and clawed each other in the process. He sighed. He pulled a last joint out of a pocket. He stuck it in his mouth and pulled out a lighter. He lit the joint and pocketed the lighter. He puffed expertly, savoring the flavor and the enveloping calm. Nodding to himself, he stepped off the wire step to fall into the dead, outstretched arms waiting to rend him.

Ben's dead body with tangled arms was in the middle of the herd many miles eastward when a lone, familiar biker pulled up on the highway ahead of it and turned sideways. Darryl waited for a moment, sizing up the numbers and the way they were spread out. He noted the stragglers and the ones wandering off the shoulders of the highway as they fell closer into step. He let them approach to twenty feet out and drove a hundred feet. He waited till they were within fifty feet. He drove another hundred and fifty and waited again . . . He took the next left as a group of five walkers, one with a forehead tat of three letters joined the group. He drove another two hundred . . .

 _ **And so death makes turncoats of us all. I couldn't resist having another dovetail with Darryl and Negan as I finished off my major sacrificial characters. Please read and review.**_


	11. HousesBrainsAreNormallyEnoughToSaveTheDa

_**I went with a different metrical source for this chapter title. I may depart from the original more often. As usual, Wilma Peters, Fat Lou, Ann, etc., are all my characters. House and Wilson are not. House is an egotistical revisionist and a problematic enough storyteller that I thought you should meet Ann mostly from her p.o.v. Enjoy!**_

House's Brains Are Normally Enough To Save The Day

"Don't move!" Ann's eyes were wide as she cocked the rifle and pointed it at the peculiar man wearing bright yellow dishwasher gloves, work lenses, and a black plastic garbage bag like an apron. He'd poked holes in the bag's bottom for head and arms and used the drawstring tie to cinch it in the back. Quite apart from not moving, he'd turned his head to look at her and rolled his eyes at the other man standing nearby. The other man looked more afraid of being shot than interested in or horrified for the woman in rags tied to a pallet tied to a tree. And Ann wasn't pointing the gun at HIM. Ann didn't try to aim at him at all. "Squeamish or uninvolved?" thought Ann. Ann was taller and more broad-shouldered than either of these men, the scared, neat one or the dismissive, scruffy one.

"This—isn't what it looks like?" said the man wringing his hands. His sheepish smile might ordinarily have been charming.

"Wilson? Shut up," said the man wearing a garbage bag. "Wilson is a doctor. I'm assisting him."

The other man looked incredulous for a moment. "YOU'RE a doctor. He is—and . . ." He shrugged, putting his hands up without being told.

"YOUR license is in good standing. MINE isn't."

"I—don't think that really matters for—well, for this?"

"Wilson. Shut. UP."

Ann was watching them, thinking, "Comfortable with each other, despite looking so different and failing to communicate. The scruffy one wishes to do the talking. Play along?" Out loud, she said, "What are you treating her for?"

The scruffy one blinked. "She's still moving? If you don't mind me stepping to the left, you'll see why that's a problem."

"Keep your hands up, and move to the right." Ann decided to keep the men on one side.

The other man pointed at a cane laying on the ground. "He's—got a bad leg." He put his pointing hand back up.

Ann nodded. "Hop to the right, then."

The scruffy one hopped twice to the right, twisting a bit to hold his balance. Then Ann looked at the woman—and saw the hole all the way through her chest to the lining of the red raincoat. Ann blinked hard. "What did you do?"

"After she came out of the woods and tried to eat Wilson, here, I knocked her down and sat on her. Then I realized I was right. She was dead. No hallucination. She was—DEAD. So I tied her up, checked her temp., cut out her heart—it's over on that rock, if you want to see—"

Ann silenced him with a hard look. She stepped back and darted her eyes at the rock he pointed at with the heart on it. She looked back at the dead woman trying to struggle free. She shifted her finger slightly off the trigger. She looked back and forth between the heart on the rock and the dead woman tied to stand beside the two living men. "This is a trick."

"I wish it was," muttered Wilson, "House? I don't mind telling you, I thought it was a hallucination, too. Ma'am? This, I believe, is the body of the missing woman on the local news. Wilma Peters?"

"I do not have a radio," said Ann, "I traded it for a better spare tire and a case of bottled water."

"I know that accent," said Wilson, "Where are you from?"

"I was raised in Amish country. I travel between there and relatives around in the other states. What will you do next, Dr. House?" She lowered the gun butt to the ground.

He was staring at the corpse as it reached out, decaying fingers beginning to brush the garbage bag-apron. "Test random areas for a pain response. My cane?"

"Of course," said Ann. She bent, retrieved it, and tossed it to House.

He caught the cane, twirled it, and, striking a pose somewhat like a fencer, he said, "En garde!" He whacked the corpse in the left shin, the right foot, the left elbow, the right wrist, and the right side of the head in rapid succession. Then he swung the cane hard overhand down onto her left shoulder. Part of the chest caved in on the left. "Unaware of damage or threatening motions. No pain response whatsoever. Her worst enemy is the efficient killer."

"She's already dead."

"This Dr. Wilson seems more precise with words, slower to act," thought Ann, "So why not have him do the talking?"

"Well, she's walking! So how do we kill the motion?" House stared openly, on the verge of a smile.

Ann pulled a pocketknife out of a pocket and offered it to House. "Cut off a finger. If it moves without her, then we need to be very careful to keep her body intact."

House nodded wordlessly, smiling. He deftly sliced off the left ring finger. "Since you won't be getting married AFTER all . . ." He held it up. "No movement." He put it in the dead woman's right hand. The corpse dropped it and continued. "No interest in eating its OWN flesh. Just us live ones. Huh!" He held up a gore-covered glove. Wilma Peters' corpse reached around it. House wiped the glove on the raincoat and held it up. The corpse reached for it. "Hmmmm."

Wilson finally lowered his hands. "You're okay with this—ma'am?"

"Miss. I am unmarried. I think if you were guilty of murder, you'd be smart enough to have left by now. That heart is far from fresh. You had better disable the body, for safety's sake." Inwardly she thought, "He feels guilty. Why?"

House nodded. "Sensible. This pallet will break sooner or later. You ARE calm about this. Do the Amish have nurses?"

Ann looked at House for a moment. "We have midwives and mothers and butchers and those who read the Bible. Give me the knife."

House, bemused, handed it over. Ann stepped forward, crouching, and slit the two Achilles tendons and the four prominent tendons at the back of the knees. She stuck the knife into the right shoulder joint, frowning, and traced it back and forth. There was an audible popping noise. The arm went slack. She repeated the process on the left. The head continued to strain forward. She opened the lower part of the raincoat.

"What—are you doing?" asked Wilson.

"Her clothing is torn, but her underthings are intact. Soiled, but intact. She did not die during an indiscretion or of being forced."

House nodded. "Not rape. Very good, Miss Butcher. What about the head wound?"

Ann stood and looked at it, casually bending the head down by the hair. "Please call me Ann. The wound is round with a flat side at the front. You've cleaned it for a better look?"

"Yes."

She nodded. "It reminds me of a small cam shaft. I cannot place the shape." She took a wipe for her hands, proffered by Wilson. "Thank you." She wiped off her hands and her knife and pocketed it. "I came here to tell you that the highway is blocked to the north. I stop here sometimes five times a year. I came out here to be neighborly—not all truckers or bikers have radios."

House gave her a withering look. "Neighborly with a gun?"

"I have only met a bad man once."

"And you shot him?"

"No, I did not."

"So what good is the gun?"

"It saved my life."

"Held him at bay, did you?"

"No, I stabbed him while he was taking my rifle. I took my rifle back and gave him a clean rag."

"To stop the bleeding," Wilson nodded approvingly.

"I told him he would bleed to death or wait for the sheriff. I went inside to call for help. He was not there when I came back. I gave my report to the sheriff and left after the waitresses vouched for me. They did not find him. He has found us, however." Ann cocked the rifle again. House limped behind Ann, Wilson following suit. Out of the woods came the bad man's corpse, limping. He wore the remains of a hoodie, jeans, boots, and had a bloodstained floral print rag tied in a loose loop hanging from his left boot. His left calf and thigh muscles were mostly gone.

House squinted at it. "That's—pretty much how I feel on cold mornings. Looks like some animals have been gnawing on him near the original stab wound."

Wilson cleared his throat. "I'm sure you did all you could, Ann. You don't need to feel guilty."

Ann fired. "I don't."

The bad man's body fell as the sound of the gunshot echoed through the nearby woods. With very little of his skull left, the hood flapped emptily in the cold breeze.

"It was his choice," Ann said simply.

"How long ago was this?" House was limping toward the dead man's body.

"Just forty days ago."

House nodded. "About a month's decomp. He probably had a shelter real close here in the woods. He got to it and bled to death? That wouldn't have taken but a couple of days." He prodded some of the skin on the arm. "No, there's sweat stains here. He got an infection and died in a week. Had some food and water with him. Remind me NOT to compliment the local sheriff on a job well done."

Ann snorted. "He was the first handsome and single man under thirty I ever met that I would never marry."

"Your attacker?" Wilson nodded, "That's—"

"The SHERIFF," said Ann, "He was a politician, not a lawman. I didn't meet my attacker. Nor was he handsome."

Wilson closed his mouth.

"Yeah, Wilson, most muggers don't introduce themselves. I'm glad to know you have standards, Ann, but what I REALLY want to know is whether you're a good hunter."

"I have done it. Why do want that?"

House opened his mouth to speak, but instead grabbed Wilson and pulled him closer to stand shoulder to shoulder with him between Ann and the dead woman. "Your work has drawn an admirer. It's that loudmouth from the diner. Let me do the talking."

A man in an orange winter coat came trotting up, pistol at the ready. "Emma, your waitress, sent me to get you, Ann. Heard a shot. What happened?"

"Don't come any closer," said House, "That guy was going to kill us. Ann shot him to save us. His germ-ridden brains are all over this place." He pointed at Wilson. "My bud here is a doctor."

Wilson blinked. "Well, that's true—"

"Shh," said House sideways to Wilson, before continuing, "I'm going to have to ask you to sit down over there—" he pointed, "and holster your gun. The CDC is very likely to quarantine us all, and if you haven't touched any of us or gotten within fifteen feet of us, you won't have the less pleasant things done to you."

"Less pleasant?"

"You know, enemas, rectal thermometers, barium drinks—that stuff."

The 'loudmouth' blinked. "Rectal, that's—that's ANAL?!"

House opened his eyes very wide and nodded very slowly. "Yes. Thank you for checking on us. We've got it under control."

The 'loudmouth' turned to leave hurriedly, then stopped. He turned back around. "A doctor? They need a doctor in the diner. Come on." He gestured at Wilson to follow him. He holstered his gun.

House rolled his eyes. "He CAN'T come with you. He's GOING TO BE QUARANTINED! It's a shame you had us kicked out of the diner. Whoever needs a doctor could have one."

Wilson was staring at the box of hand wipes a few feet away. "What's happened?"

"The cook had a heart attack. Then he went nuts or something. He bit Emma on the hand as we helped him up. Bit the guy next to me on the neck. He bled pretty bad. We shoved the cook in the women's restroom, since no other women but the other waitress is here. Emma and the bit guy? They both got fevers. They're layin' in a booth. The cook's still bangin' on the door."

"Fat Lou had a heart attack?" House shook his head. "Besides the biting, how was he acting?"

"He was growlin' and gaspin'. Trying to grab everybody and eat 'em."

House shot a look at Wilson. "Ann? Wilson? Did Fat Lou ever come out back here?"

The loudmouth laughed. "Fat Lou never did nothin' but cook here. He owns half the place. The waitresses do all the dishes—even clean the kitchen and dump the trash. You know he installed that door to the kitchen just so he could walk less than ten steps from his parking place. Lazy bastard. Why?"

"Fat Lou's Big Eats is a very clean diner," said Wilson, "Superbug or airborne?"

House looked at the loudmouth. "You'd better go tell them to restrain the feverish. Then go home and take a shower. Clean up really well. Watch the news."

The loudmouth fled around to the front of the diner.

"You lied to him. You haven't called anyone." Ann looked at House sternly.

"I saved his life. And he was the only person IN the diner I hated. Go ahead Wilson, clean up. Are you a good hunter or not?"

"I have good aim. Why do you want a hunter?"

"Nobody, not even a neat freak like Fat Lou takes their shoes on and off with gloves on. If there's a germ involved in this, an animal carrying it could be sniffing around the diner here. Fat Lou DOES park right up at the kitchen door, but he's short enough that it probably takes four steps just to walk past his open truck door. If he's done it every day, he's got a month's worth of germs in his truck."

Wilson stopped wiping his hands. "What do you mean, 'IF there's a germ involved in this?' What else could it be?"

"Germs don't reanimate the dead, Wilson. They don't have brains. How could they teach a corpse to walk? How could they start a brain doing what it did when it was alive? What would cause a germ to cause a dead human brain to cause a dead human body to walk and reach and grab and resort to what's essentially cannibalism?"

Wilson blinked. "Well, I don't know. How does a rabies germ cause a living person to fear water? Therefore, causing the infection a greater chance of success?"

"You idiot. People can fear anything while they're ALIVE. The best and brightest brain researchers in the country can't simulate neural activity, let ALONE cause NEW neural activity a week after death!"

"I'm sorry," said Ann.

Both men looked at Ann suddenly, having forgotten she was there.

"I am not good at tracking, but I could show you an animal that HAS been dead for less than eight hours. Why do you want that?"

House brightened. "So we could be sure this is only happening to humans. Where?"

"In my truck. It is refrigerated."

"How Amish ARE you, exactly?" House looked at her sidelong. They began to walk to the parking lot. "Or—is your 'refrigeration' done by blocks of ice?"

"My grandparents were Amish on my father's side. He left and married. I was raised on their farm summers and went to an all-girls' school the rest of the year. These days I travel, guesting and taking letters and goods between Amish country and their relatives around the rest of the country. I have a slaughtered pig in my truck. A gift for the Wright family. It was raised properly, and it is good meat. I would butcher it for them."

They reached her truck, parked at the side of the diner with no windows. It was a small, converted ice cream truck with no logos or pictures on the completely rebuilt side. She opened the side to show them a pig hammocked on two sawhorses with ropes. House found its wound and nodded. "Its head should still move if it were animated. Could you spare the head? With the whole upper neck attached and a portion of the spine? If we take material from the lady in red, apply it to the pig, and it doesn't start moving, then we could be sure of no direct animal transference. If the head's not attached to the body anymore, the meat would still be good. What do you say?"

"I think you should buy the whole pig." Ann looked around to see two pickup trucks and a station wagon leaving quickly, headed south. "I could back up to where you want it, cut it up there."

House frowned. "What about the Wright family?"

"I cannot reach them before my refrigerator stops running with the roadblock to the north. If you have three hundred dollars, I could give the family money."

House started to shake his head, stopped, looked thoughtful for a moment, and said, "Nyet, nyet, nyet! Pay her, Wilson!" He limped rapidly around to the door of the diner, looked inside—and suddenly put his cane through one door handle, hook through the other side. He turned and hopped to one side and flattened himself against the wall as the door began convulsively jerking outward.

"House?" said Wilson, "What are you—"

A beefy arm smashed through the window on the other side of the door from House. It was followed by a large, snarling, gray-skinned head with a blood-covered mouth. There was another gunshot. A large hole opened in the protruding head, and the head and arm went limp. House knelt, crawl-hopped under the window on the front of the diner, and met Wilson at the corner of the building. "Apparently the loudmouth was the ONLY one that listened to my advice. No one's tied up. There's five moving dead in there. Tell Ann she's taking her pig eaters to go." He picked up a forgotten broom leaning on the downspout, and started limping quickly for Ann's refrigerator truck.

 _ **Now what did he mean by 'Nyet, nyet, nyet?' Stay tuned; please read and review.**_


	12. UnlessThoseBrainsArePiggishAndHeJustWant

_**So, House was just startled enough to lose his favorite cane. We're reverting now, for the explanation of his outburst in Russian, among other things.**_

Unless Those Brains Are Piggish And He Just Wants A Good Lay

"So. . ." The masked man had brought out a pitcher of tea and was sharing it with Wilson and was listening quietly up to that point in House's and Wilson's recollection of meeting Ann. "You left the diner to go south with Ann."

"No." Wilson made a face, remembering. "House said we needed the news. He hotwired Fat Lou's truck and Emma's car. He drove one in front of the broken window and one in front of the other. He took handle-ties from a few garbage bags, tied them to his cane, and got in the driver's seat to yank it out of the door. He smashed the dead between the two vehicles as they came out, pinning them so Ann could step forward and disable them. It was pretty upsetting."

"Very. They nearly broke my cane before I got the first car moved." House's misunderstanding made Wilson blink hard.

"And that left you with five?"

"Six dead bodies with moving heads."

House shrugged. "Counting them wasn't my top priority. I had to stop them all with my favorite cane and a bent screwdriver. He's counting the one with a bun near the oven."

The masked man looked at House, cocking his head. "Bent screwdriver?"

"Emma? She had her hair in a bun. She wasn't dead yet. Near the oven? Anyway, they'd walked right past her. Maybe because she was so quiet. Barely breathing." House rolled his eyes. "All right. The screwdriver I pounded into the ignition to twist it and start the car. I DID have to hotwire Fat Lou's truck. Security feature in the ignition lock."

Wilson nodded. "We took turns watching Emma while the news stations were shutting down. He pointed out the local anchorwoman, an Elsie Crusher. She was six foot five. He was showing me that that was the height needed to kill Wilma Peters when Emma's fever spiked. Emma stroked out despite everything we tried. The hospitals were shut down, evacuated. Then the phones were dead. The cell towers were dead. The internet wasn't reachable by my phone, at least."

The masked man looked back at House. "You watched the news to solve a murder?"

"I watched the news for information. I'd already solved the murder. Crusher Khrushchev'ed the woman and left her in a mud puddle of a grave."

The masked man looked back at Wilson, nodding. "High-heeled shoe as a blunt object."

Wilson nodded. "We didn't know the locals well enough for House to narrow down a motive."

"Yes we did!" House looked at Wilson funny. "She broadcasted live from her main sponsor?"

Wilson looked blank.

"The other bar! You know, where Wilma's ex worked. Obviously Elsie was getting rid of some competition."

"For jealousy or business? I mean, for love or money?"

"Who cares?" House shrugged.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "Fine. Anyway, the population was already decimated, and we obviously needed to prepare for our survival." I bleached the kitchen while Ann helped House remove and package the heads for study, including the pig's head. Then I helped Ann move the rest of the pig into the kitchen while House pilfered whatever was in the cars."

"So she butchered the pig, and you packed it up and left then?"

"Actually, no. We got two more people right away. House found Pete trying to open the safe in the convenience store. He and the manager had arranged to meet and use the money to buy their way away from what they imagined was a local epidemic."

"Not a really bad idea, if they'd been nearer an airport. I imagine a few Rockefellers tried it." House shrugged again. "Obviously, it was the manager's idea. Pete was just going along with it. He'd watched us put down the dead and was terrified of us till I convinced him to come join us. He started cooking fresh pork right away. He was very enthusiastic about cooking in Fat Lou's kitchen. Apparently he'd applied to work there a few times. I got Wilson to go up on the roof of Fat Lou's—"

"And I saw the dead trucker in the semi. It was trying to get into the sleeper compartment. At first, I didn't realize what that meant. It turned out that Ann Gee had been with her client in the sleeper cab. The trucker left at some point, and apparently had a heart attack."

"Probably watching us, having slept through all the news." House shrugged.

"I'm sure it looked alarming to the uninformed." Wilson grimaced. "I mean, it looked alarming to ME, and I knew it was forgivable. Ann Gee noticed him gone, woke up, started out of the sleeper, and went back in as it came after her. When I remembered that the dead only seemed to have interest in eating the living, I came down and told House. He put down the trucker and rescued her. House put me in charge, declaring himself my advisor.

I posted a guard rotation on the roof and watched about half a shift more than anyone. House took up with Ann Gee. She worked sentry and did some dishes. Mostly she shacked up with House, so House wound up doing a lot of other things. Working a lot more than he normally does so he could say their shares of the work were being done." Pete talked us through fueling up all the vehicles and every suitable container except the diesel semi with the manual pumps at the station. We all but Ann Gee took turns doing that at first. She joined in, mostly to seem busy when House was working, I think. The propane tanks out back of the diner were nearly empty by the end of the month. We'd managed to load and prepare three vehicles with salt pork and every useful thing we hadn't already used up. We almost got trapped right as we were leaving."

"A herd of dead came?" The masked man nodded.

"Nearly two weeks had gone by. Not a single other person, living or dead, had come. Then they all came at once. More than a hundred. House saved us again." Wilson gestured at House.

"Those were the 'other things' I was doing." House stuck his chest out and made a lofty expression. "Wilson puts such things as 'saving the day' and 'prognostication' under the 'miscellaneous' category."

"House—"

"Well, you do!"

"What were his escape preparations?" The masked man refilled Wilson's tea glass.

"Oh, thank you. He'd parked our three preferred escape vehicles behind the semi with Ann Gee's old client hanging half out of it. He said living people would look there last. He took all the fishing line he thought we could spare and wove it just under average neck height back and forth through the branches around the wooded side of the lot. That did actually take the heads off a dozen or so dead ones when they came and snarled up a few others. He scattered loops of about three hundred feet of rope and extension cords and jerry-rigged a winch from my motorcycle engine. He wired it to start from inside the kitchen. He had set the propane tanks to blow, all but the last big one we were still using and the two portables in the vehicles. He'd given all the ammunition that fit Ann's gun to Ann already and packaged the other bullets—"

"The convenience store sold bullets?"

"Yeah, I wasn't used to that either. A lot of hunting went on in the area, though. Anyway, when the herd started at us from the side with the escape vehicles, Pete had fallen asleep at his post. I came to with Ann shooting the rifle through the left shoulder of the dead guy grappling with Ann Gee and into the two dead coming through the door. Ann Gee did some close-quarter fighting—I didn't really see what she did, but it involved twisting the falling body of one to knock down another while bashing the third's head into the doorframe. Ann Gee got the door shut with her left go-go boot crushing the still-snapping jaw of one dead guy she'd knocked over. It only had one working arm at that point. I had the bar on the door just in time for the dead state trooper to smash through the window and cover us both with broken glass. He was still holding his empty gun.

That's when House reached us. A cane blow to the wrist knocked the cop's gun to the floor. Another on the back of the skull knocked it down for good. He shouted at me to take the gun and set fire to the booth he'd just been in and tossed me a disposable lighter. I—forgot the gun. By the time we realized we needed to leave, Ann was almost out of the bullets she was firing through the door to hold them off. We followed House to the kitchen, jamming the homemade doorstop—"

"Made of spare tires!" House beamed.

"Yes. We called Pete down from the roof, who was just panicking up there, useless, and House started up what was left of my motorcycle. The tightening loops tore feet loose, then some entire limbs and a few heads. He and I and Ann Gee had boots on. He had saved thick cardboard from foil containers we'd used up and, well, probably the trash. He duct-taped those around Pete's legs and lashed deep stock pots to Ann's belt with long lengths of cooking twine. It made crude homemade boots. With nothing standing right outside the kitchen, he sprayed something out the door and lit it. He'd poured something flammable on the lot anyway, I think."

"All the Windex and diesel and cooking oil we could spare," said House, "Who needs their windows done these days, right Mr. Clean?"

"The fuse he hadn't told us about touched off the propane tanks on the vehicles at the other end of the lot. We walked out behind him, crushing heads and necks with our feet all the way to safety. I've never thrown up so much in my life. I'm a doctor!

—We reached the cars. House and Ann Gee and Ann drove. Ann Gee and Pete and I were in the middle car. House had left written instructions to the police station, where we stopped next. He wanted to go to Winchester, but—"

"You had to detour around the interstate junction areas. Quite a long way from them, no doubt."

Wilson nodded. "We wound up finding a drug manufacturer in Maryland that used their delivery service. It had maps to that office you found us at."

House snorted. "Give it up, Wilson. I know we haven't been moved."

Wilson shrugged apologetically at the masked man. "Sorry. What gave it away, House?"

"The installation of Lexan in the wall here was the final piece of evidence." He pointed with his cane. "The fittings I recognized from the bakery in town. The water-stained concrete floor threw me at first. I thought it was a basement. I remember Christmas didn't have a basement—"

"Christmas?" the masked man cocked his head again.

"House's nickname for Corporate Somatic Material Solutions."

"Ah. Go on."

"Well, even though it's been cool enough, it hasn't been damp enough. The air is very dry in here. What did you do, Mr. Fixit? Tear all the carpet off the floor and find some old water stains?"

"The carpet was weighted by cubicles, rather than fastened down. As for the stains, I happened to have a minor corrosive. There was no need to apply it to anyone's skin."

Wilson shuddered.

House waved his hands dismissively for Wilson's benefit. "Johnny Appleseed here has been rather busy. You tacked this whole room together from old drywall? Isn't construction a bit loud in this day and age, Mr. Springsteen?"

"Not when it's indoors and sound-insulated. Four floors' worth of ceiling tiles is enough."

House shook his head. "Freddie the Freeloader? You were going to tell us about Pete."

"A simple catch-and-release went differently than expected. It's a tactic I use to learn about local politics. I've marked maps with details ranging from Vermont to Texas. I am preparing to move westward in hopes of locating NORAD. There are a few locations in old bases in these coastal states I need to be sure of first. Pete didn't come off as completely honest. But he did say he was working for Negan. I'd taken him when he was out scavenging as punishment. Apparently he ate too much of his own cooking to satisfy them. He described your old camp and gave vague directions to it after I recognized your names.

House isn't the most common name to begin with. Then being a doctor, searching for Vicodin, having a doctor friend named Wilson, keeping company with a hooker, and being thought of as a genius and a jerk . . . I figured it had to be you. I released him within a quarter mile of a patrol point I'd noticed Negan's people frequent. Negan is unusual. He has a wider territory than any other little tyrant I've run into. You have a worse enemy than most, House. He killed his last doctor."

Wilson nodded. "From there you tracked us somehow."

"Yes."

"Mr. Funt probably wishes to insist on the germ front now."

Wilson squinted at House. "Mr. Funt?"

"Candid Camera?"

The masked man waved a hand dismissively. "I've used cameras and everything you could name on my quest to cure the animation germ."

"IT'S NOT A GERM, YOU IDIOT!" House bellowed.

The argument continued.

 _ **For me, it's always been relative when House called someone an idiot. It was when they missed something he was sure they should have been able to catch. In this case, House was only moved to insult the masked man that way within known aptitudes (tactics of battle or technician's evaluation of machine design or repetitive non-acceptance from the expert.) I get this specifically from House's famous line, "You ruddy jackass." Sorry, I can't remember the episode, but it was the one where he met a couple and figured out who had been unfaithful. Husband looked a lot like the actor who played Taub.**_

 _ **Please read and review. And let me know if you like: "The Nose Knows: Worthy Attempts" or "I No Longer Pay For My Tea" also posted on this site.**_


	13. Come, Convince Him But I Don't Know How

House's Plan 9 For The Walking Dead

By Herr D

 _ **Wilson undoubtedly is digging the current situ. What with this being Chapter 13, I felt the need to reference a couple of the members of House's old teams. No new presences or actions in retrospect. Just some medispeak and referred memories by context.**_

Come, Convince Him But I Don't Know How

In the divided room, House was shaking his head. "Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is an entomopathogen, or insect-pathogenizing fungus—it just uses what's already there. It DOESN'T break ground rewiring brains, causing cannibalism or dead mobility in ways that can't be explained. I understand your logic there, but it's flawed." House waved a hand dismissively.

Wilson raised a hand. "I . . . don't know this one. There's a vivisecting FUNGUS?"

"No. What it IS is kinda cool, Wilson. But it doesn't qualify as a Dr. Frankenstein. It essentially just drugs the ants that catch it. They cluster at the right height to incubate more fungus and get the ant form of lockjaw, clamping down really good on whatever they're crawling on. Then they die. Their bodies are food for the fungus. The reason it has no bearing is that the 'mind control'—" House rolled his eyes. "—happens before the ant dies. The little buggy MK-Ultra that dies BEFORE it starts acting against its own species; now THAT would be an example. We barely have galvanic activation after death in the natural world, Mr. Tesla. Have you actually WATCHED how the dead move?"

"Of course." The masked man's tea glass was still a third full, forgotten.

"There's a babbling phase to the movement, though shorter than a person—a cross maybe between learning and remembering the movements. There's muscle memory involved, to be sure, but the dead are simply 'acquiring' the information necessary for the task at hand. If you look at it mathematically, it's the human version of a van der Waals machine. This is too elegant a form of human destruction to be an artificial plague, and it's too unique to be a natural plague. So, IT'S NOT A PLAGUE."

"Why does the bite cause a fever then, if it's not an infection?" said the masked man, "I get that people dying of anything turn, bit or not, means that we all already have some inactive form of it. But why always a fever when a bite turns them? And why is there so much range in how long it takes the fever to kill them? Like they're very different in their resistance levels?"

House glanced at Wilson for a half-second. "Actually, I'd be willing to bet that anyone who already HAD a fever would be able to fight off the bite fever for long enough to get over the other fever or die from it. They WOULD still turn. As for why always a fever? Wilson? I never said there are no germs transferred in the mouth. It's Komodo Lite."

Wilson nodded. "Of course. Garden variety sepsis."

"SEPTIC tank variety sepsis."

Wilson made a small smile. "Well, yes. That would actually support House's stance, I mean, the fact that a bite kills people by infection, and so takes time based on the variety of germs available in the mouth of the biter. You can only have one infection at a time, even if you have a variety of differently infected cells."

House brightened. "The variety of Actinomycetes alone was interesting, in just the seven heads we'd collected right there. I mean—they'd eaten food from the same kitchen! The PIG's mouth was a lot cleaner. Apparently Ann was more correct than she knew when she said it had been raised right, Dr. Spock."

The masked man nodded. "So you did study the seven heads. How did you package them?"

"With such a limited sample and no guaranteed refrigeration, examining variety of decomp was going to be very important. I lined them up and used a Sharpie on the forehead."

Wilson nodded, remembering. "Permanent marker, just like regular neurosurgeons. 'A' through 'G.' You didn't bother labelling the pig, I remember."

"I was pretty sure I couldn't confuse him with anyone but Fat Lou, and he was clearly marked with an 'F.' For 'Fat!'"

Wilson looked at House. "Did you choose those letters based on their human identities?"

"Had to keep 'em straight somehow. They were gonna start looking pretty gnarly awfully fast. It was Abel, Bugs, Cherry, Wilma, Emma, Fat Lou, and Gorgon. And of course Hamlet."

Wilson closed his eyes and shook his head. "I remember you told me Wilma was D."

House smiled. "For 'Debut!'"

Wilson didn't even blink. "I knew Emma and Fat Lou. Cherry was the kind of pie the off-duty waitress was eating, I guess. Where did the other names come from?"

"Abel was the guy in the last booth with the Semper Fi tat, badly hungover and moaning about his brother. If he'd been more with it, he might have survived. His brother was what he'd been drinking over—so Abel. Gorgon had dreadlocks and a snakeskin belt. Anywho, I used scented garbage bags around double-corrugated cardboard for all of them, because the smell of rot put Ann Gee off her game. Abel and Bugs—"

"Wait, where did 'Bugs' come from?"

"Ohio."

"No! I mean, where did the nickname come from?"

"He was eating carrot cake and said 'What's up' to me when I sat down."

"Oh, I get it." Wilson shot the masked man a look. The masked man shrugged.

"As I was saying, Abel and Bugs both got potting soil. I used FlexSeal to close their throats and poured their mouths full. I taped about a tablespoon more to each ear. Cherry and Debut got rock salt in the same manner. Emma and Fat Lou got nothing, not even FlexSeal. Gorgon got brain surgery, since the dreadlocks made a great handle. Hamlet got daily infusions from one head a day in alphabetical order. When Hamlet didn't move after two months, I ditched it. They all tended to do nothing but stare if I didn't get them out at least twice a day."

"How did the brain surgery go?" The masked man was very still.

"The brain stem mattered," said House, "I'm not sure what else did. I tried cutting out lobes and severing the hemispheres. That made no consistent difference with any of them till I reached the amygdala. I may have messed that up. I'm still not sure. The heads all stopped moving about halfway through removing that if they survived that long. Later efforts were pretty much the same. Sometimes one lobe or another had something happening in it, apparently. Nothing consistent by structure. A few randomly arranged neurons are apparently a part of it. "

"I went about it a bit differently." The masked man sat forward. "Cutting the face off a dead man while fighting, I noticed it still turned its head to look at me with no eyes left. I realized they don't need eyes to sense motion. I found a school for the deaf. The dead there were just as functional. I tried air fresheners and chemical agents, but nothing disguises the scent of a living person. Because—"

"Because they don't have a sense of smell." House nodded. "Nose is one of the first things to decay."

"I still wonder about that." Wilson finished his tea. "Why turn the head if it doesn't matter? From what House says, there isn't enough brain left working to hold memories of life or understand what it looks like or, well, anything except ravenously eat and grab and walk."

"Could that be a hard-wired instinct or a balance issue?" The masked man turned to House.

"You idiot," House gave the masked man a sour look. "Come on, General Lee. If you designed these, why would YOU have them point the way forward with their head?"

The masked man paused. "Mouth's toward food. Skull's between a fighter and the nape of the neck, the most vulnerable point. Arms to engage—you're saying it's just strategic, House?"

"Orientation accomplishes nothing else. Every aspect of this phenom is elegant, effective. I'm more interested in how they know there's a fire."

Wilson startled. "Wait, what?"

House leaned forward slightly. "Don Quixote here has independently confirmed that the dead are deaf. Without pressure regulation and a functioning inner ear, the dead shouldn't be able to balance to walk. Yet they keep walking. Do germs run gyroscopes now?"

"Quixote actually kind of fits him," said Wilson, turning to the masked man, "But House has a point there. They have balance enough to walk without any balance mechanism. They start toward a fire without sight or hearing or a sense of smell. How do they DO all these things?"

"Something ELSE germs can't do. Metagame like a wombat." House grumbled, staring at the medical mannequin with its back turned to everyone.

Wilson looked annoyed.

The masked man shook his head. "I'm going to have to go with the full understanding that science didn't catch up to why certain home remedies worked or appeared to work for hundreds of years after they were used. I briefly set up a lab off the coast of Delaware two summers ago."

House smiled, "Delaware in Persian means 'Braveheart.' The Delaware Indians would have approved. Pity the state was actually named for some blue-blooded lord. You were there for the seafood?"

The masked man cocked his head. "I was observing coastal behaviors and enjoying the best security I'd had in a while. Rockbound cruise ship. It was easy to clear and build a lab on. I had a sequencer and managed to get to some overdue samples I'd made. I wound up sequencing 16SrRNA to identify 'staphylococcus' among several others, and found an anomaly, according to the texts. There was no Clostrydia. It took me a few days to realize why. You must understand, I've had no medical training whatsoever and no tutor."

"You've done fairly well, Lord Greystoke," House said mockingly, "Why don't you help us pros crawl through your conclusions?"

"It took me a while to realize that the pattern of decomposition was the cause. Aerobic microbes are normally displaced by Clostrydia because it's anaerobic. The good air wasn't getting stirred into graves before this happened. So the microbes don't follow that pattern for chemical reasons."

Wilson blinked. "I suppose the soil will be a little less fertile from now on. Without that gas release, Clostrydia won't do its part. Won't that throw things out of balance, House?"

House shrugged. "Humans aren't the only things dying, Wilson; besides, normally don't people use embalming fluid? Congratulations, Doolittle; you figured out that the average cadaver decomposition island has become a cadaver decomposition Sea Star Island. Anything else?"

Wilson looked about to ask about that reference. The masked man nodded. "Out of nine species of microbe and three species of fungi, only one bacteria wasn't significantly altered in population size on sampled cadavers! I compared the mobile dead humans to fifteen dead animals of different species, all mammal, reasoning that mammals should have the most chemically in common. Obviously we can't do without it, since we need it just to survive. E. Coli didn't vary twenty percent. Not once. I don't know how to tell one strain from another—"

House rolled his eyes. "You idiot! E. Coli can breathe in AIR!"

"It's listed as anaerobic."

"It's . . . no, FACULTATIVELY anaerobic. It's optional!" House turned to Wilson and smiled, "It's the 'Thirteen' of germs! Goes either way!"

Wilson sighed and then smiled. "I don't think you've made a single point in this debate, Mr. Quixote. Maybe you prepared that thing you mentioned?"

The masked man nodded. He stood and walked to the left edge of the observation glass.

"Watch it now, Miggs likes you." House smiled broadly.

Wilson blinked, then shuddered at House's latest movie reference. He turned to watch the masked man remove a tarp. Under it was a conveyor belt, enclosed in a tunnel two feet high, suitable for passing fairly large objects. Large, thick, wooden doors closed at three points on the way through, clearly rigged to not let anything as big as a human pass. The masked man wheeled a covered cart into House's view. "I have two gifts for you. One is technically me giving you back something you said you valued. The other is proof that the animation PHENOMENON is actually a germ. The big package is fragile. Don't shake it or turn it too far sideways. Both were right where I thought they might be, as soon as I could travel for them. I should inform you that Pete was killed. Shot. I'm not sure who did it or why. I can tell you the dead have thinned out considerably around here and some large numbers have gone in Negan's direction, and that I lost contact with a bug I planted on our recent visitors' transportation. Come join me when you're finished in here, Wilson. I may have fixed the bread maker."

House perked up. "Where are you growing grain, old MacDonald?"

The masked man paused. "I've planted window boxes in easily-missed locations in several places. I'm afraid several of my caches were found and taken, but none of the window boxes. I've also found that grain products, such as cornflakes and other cereals, can be ground up if they haven't molded. It makes an odd flour, but recipes can be adapted."

House stood and pointed at him. "That was Rice Chex bread on my fish sandwich, wasn't it?"

"Very good. Enjoy your gifts." The masked man walked out a door out of House's view. Wilson pulled the tarp off the cart to reveal a very small package wrapped in blue paper with pink cupcakes on it and a very large package wrapped in paper with red and green stripes on it. Wilson put the small gift on the conveyor and cranked it through.

"No bows?" said House.

Wilson shook his head quietly, turning to the large package as House tore open the first. House opened the old Vicodin bottle to see the plastic cigarette pack tear strip inside. Wilson lowered the large package to the conveyor gently and began to crank it through. "What is that, anyway?"

"This bottle of Vicodin is the only one Cuddy ever paid for. The date on it is a typo, completely wrong. I put it in the drug store cart of stuff and she paid for it without hesitation."

"And the cigarette thing?"

"Ann Gee had been saving her last pack of cigarettes, planning to quit when we met. She tore it open after our first time together. I asked her why, and she said I wasn't just a john. I'd pleased her. Women lie about that sort of thing all the time, but when they use a resource they have to conserve to celebrate you, you know you're special to them. That it's not just a lie."

"That's more sentimental than I expected. Here it is," said Wilson. He passed it through the enclosed conveyor. "He's right, you know."

"No, Wilson, Mr. GermFan6969 is NOT right. It's not an epidemic."

"Well, it doesn't matter who he is or what he believes. What matters is that this gets done. Since this may be the last time I'll see you, I should tell you—well. . ."

"What?!"

"I've been sleeping with Ann Gee."

House blinked; he shrugged. "Weren't you doing that out on supply runs from our last group?"

"No! . . . You're okay with this?"

"What do you want me to say? 'Bros before hos?' She's a prostitute, Wilson. So you 'played House' a bit, eh?" He waggled his eyebrows.

"That's not funny. I'm just glad this is going well."

"Oh, wait; I forgot—what's the phrase?" House looked puzzled for a moment. He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah! Wilson? You're – a – horrible – person! " House made a fake shocked expression and held his chest. Then he rolled his eyes. "At least your conscience got a workout beating you up. Have you seen the gym here, by the way? Prince Charming's got enough attendees of the sort MY conscience would fit in with."

Wilson made a face. "He showed me. Good metaphor actually. Just when I think your conscience is dead it gets up and comes at me. So you were okay with me sleeping with her all along? You didn't want Pete to sleep with her."

"You idiot! SHE didn't want Pete to sleep with her! You never wondered why Ann and Mary never made trouble for me keeping Ann Gee around? No cattiness, no fighting?"

"Well, no."

"I played to their sympathies, telling them that being with just me kept Pete's hands off her. That I was being gentlemanly by pretending to be possessive."

"You lied to them."

"Of COURSE I lied to them! I figured when you turned down my dating proposal that you'd taken the hint and shacked up with her downhill every chance you got."

"Finding undead Sofia Vergara isn't my idea of a real date. I'm not into necrophilia or extremely risky behaviors."

"No, ex-TREME-ly risky would be to try to get a blowjob. With the right dental tools, I don't know—maybe it could work. She was the hottest Mexican I remember."

Wilson stopped cringing and shook himself. "I don't think she was Mexican."

"And things like THAT will no longer offend her!" House beamed.

Wilson shook his head. "I'm going to help Don Quixote any way I can. And I'll be asking Ann Gee to stay with me. You LOVE puzzles. Why don't you want to help? If you're sure it's not germs, why not figure out what it REALLY is? What are you afraid of?"

House looked suddenly serious. "It's not fear so much as certainty. I know this one is beyond me. I would really rather focus on what I MIGHT succeed at. Like getting my hands on more Vicodin."

"How can you be sure you won't succeed?"

"This, since it's not germs, is supernatural."

Wilson looked at him warily, "You're not afraid religious people were right all along?"

House grimaced hard, "No, Wilson, I'm afraid they were wrong."

Wilson studied him for a moment. "So you're saying, this is 'end of days,' and you think it's Revelations time, but the religious groups were still wrong? How does that work, exactly?"

"My way was perfectly safe, Wilson. I stay a selfish bastard, and if there's no God, I get more of what I want than other people. If any of the major religions was right, God is some wonderfully forgiving father figure who'll bend over backwards to save everyone. Like YOU would be if you were God."

"House—"

"HE would find a technicality to save me with! But THIS?! This is God like MY father. I save you from dying with a brilliant treatment solution, and the dead start walking to be more like YOU. We leave the medical profession and suddenly there ISN'T one anymore. The oldest profession will be the last! I hide from technology to avoid the law, and technology revisits the dark ages. I run from the law, and there ISN'T law anymore. I got over on Cuddy and the police and the Fucking-B-I, and THEY'RE all dead! I was resigned to not having any more Vicodin, and when I got Vic killed, there it was, right where it should be? Unpilfered? All I had to do was throw a hint so Ann and Mary would throw their LIVES away, and I could be more like Negan for a moment. Now the people in charge are people like Vic and Negan, and I get over on them, and what happens? The Man In Black comes galloping in to save the day and KIDNAPS US ALL AWAY FROM MY VICODIN?! You realize it's a lot more likely that my head's lolling on the ground somewhere having a delirious nightmare because I'm dead and this is hell on Earth!"

"This is not some dream, House. No hallucination. Tell me it's not germs again, and open your stupid gift." Wilson's mouth was a hard, thin line.

"IT'S NOT GERMS!" House seized a corner of the package and tore a large swath away from it. He blinked. He cocked his head. His eyebrows furrowed. "OOoooh!"

 _ **Yeah, he's looking right into the camera again. Now what could the gift be? What could be so earth-shatteringly important? Also of note, I figure the fact that the food truck Jesus battled Rick and Darryl over started awfully easily for having been untended for years. It MUST have been left by someone . . . As for House's meltdown, this is more or less what happens to most people when their faith (or absence of faith) is shaken, or worse, shaken and not talked about for way too long.**_


	14. Wilson Gave The 2 Gifts-Now What Happens

Wilson Gave The Two Gifts—Now What Happens?

House stared at the partially unwrapped package for a moment longer, mentally drinking in what it contained. Wilson gave an obviously irritated sigh. "So what is it?"

"It's a dead baby."

Wilson's eyes opened wide and began speaking more rapidly. "I'm sorry. He said he was giving you proof that you need to take his view seriously. He never said—"

"That's exactly what he was doing." House swiveled the package to reveal a hard acrylic isolette holding a dead baby, gray and slightly mummified, connected to leads and tubes of all descriptions. House pulled a small stack of printer paper off the top of the isolette and held it to the Lexan wall for Wilson to see. "Readings here turned to the top show it died, but it didn't turn. Why? This is a sterile isolette. THERE'S A GERM INVOLVED IN THIS." House shook his head, staring. "God or Satan is an intelligent legion of GERMS, and he's using his powers for the dark side. This can't be. It can't BE. I MUST be hallucinating!" He wobbled. He sat down, hard, on the floor. His eyes rolled back—

. . . he was startled awake by a strong, acrid smell. "Uchh—what IS that? Apple vinegar?"

"Straight from a dead battery," said the masked man, "I don't have smelling salts."

"I didn't faint. I was hoping you had a pocket to pick."

"Your vitals say otherwise." The masked man pointed at the isolette's monitor, with new wires attached from it to House and a new cylindrical battery.

"I may have slightly overdosed on your sleep agent. Didn't handle the stress of your gift well with my system overloaded. Where's Wilson?"

"He's in disposed."

"Anyway, you don't need to scare me anymore; I'm on your side now. Where's Wilson?"

The masked man cocked his head. "I told you, he's in disposed. I'm not trying to scare you."

House looked at the masked man, incredulous. "My doctor, the only real doctor I know alive, and the only man I know that I really trust never to hurt me is unavailable, I'm being cared for by someone with no medical training who kidnapped me and threatened torture to me and my friends, and I'm powerless and in restraints, possibly suffering from an overdose and a concussion, and you're NOT trying to scare me? I'm NOT looking forward to Halloween this year."

"You aren't in restraints. You know that because you tried to pick my pockets twice."

"What are you wearing, anyway, Frodo? Is this mithril?" House wobbled.

"Kevlar."

"No pockets at all, huh?"

"No."

House rolled to face away and threw up. "Huh. I can't think of a literary reference for a man with no pockets. Imagine yourself in a book for a moment. What would you call yourself?" He turned to look back at the masked man. House frowned. His eyes widened. He sat up very slowly, holding his head and his breath. He stared at the masked man. "Huh."

"How much did you use?"

House blinked. "Um. Around thirty milliliters, sir. Vicodin chaser."

"You really shouldn't be conscious right now."

"Move me to the lab. Bring the white board. I'll work when I wake up. Where's Wilson?"

"He's in the bathroom. Fish didn't agree with him."

House's eyes crossed. He tried to uncross them by pulling his face back around his skull. They stayed crossed. "You tell that fish that my friend is IN DISPOSED, and that he should keep his opinions to himself. Wilson's a good doctor. How did the fish get cancer?" House threw up again and began to fall—

. . . and the masked man neatly caught him. The masked man sighed, picked House up completely off the floor, and carried him out of the room.

House came to on the recliner. It faced the same room, but the back wall was missing to reveal an underequipped lab on the bare concrete floor with stainless steel tables. House stood, grabbing his cane, limped hurriedly to the kitchenette, opened a can of green beans, set them to boil, and advanced on the white board, eyes wide. He began scribbling and sketching immediately.

About an hour later, Wilson entered the viewing room. "Glad to see you up and about, House. I didn't see definitive evidence of a concussion, but I wasn't really happy having to let you sleep off your overdose. I'm supposed to tell you that the electron microscope will have to wait, and that we're about to test some immersion oil to make sure the formulation is okay. He said he had to make some at the manufacturer he found. Something about the mix already in process."

"As long as you're carrying messages," House turned slightly to Wilson, "Tell him we don't want the electron microscope anyway. I have to speak to him about a different kind of microscopy. We're going to need some unconventional equipment. Recovered from the bad fish?"

Wilson looked surprised at the question. "Yes . . . thank you. You—seem to be hard at work."

"Our captor is the scariest kind of person. Stay on his good side at all costs."

Wilson smiled thinly. "I have been anyway. Everything he's wanted has been more than reasonable. What's—the scariest kind of person?" He looked at House sideways, studying House's rapid scribblings.

"He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't react to my jibes, calling him by references to movies or books because he doesn't identify with anyone. Let's stick to Quixote. That should be safe. His sanity might depend on sticking to his goals."

Wilson nodded. "He IS rather—driven. I get the idea he's not going to torture us though. Our goals are aligned anyway. There wouldn't be any point." He pulled out a Post-It pad and a pen. "He'll be checking in later and asked me to make a list of what you might need?"

House began listing them immediately. "Samples of every kind of wire he can find with specs. Tools to work it. Batteries, electronic doodads, stuff to make remotes with. Several stopwatches. Fiber optic cable of every kind. Micromanipulators. Sterile environment stuff. Multiple lenses, preferably with one flat side and one convex. FlexSeal or PlastiDip. Sterilizing agents of various kinds. Glass slides. Crash helmets."

"Crash helmets?" Wilson was on his fifth post-it. "Why crash helmets?"

"I'm of the opinion that the dead aren't smart enough to raise the faceplate or take them off. Easy way to make them safe for experimentation. Football helmets might work, too. At some point, I'll want a centrifuge and various kinds of lens glass and the spectroscope powered up. Carbon dater. Geiger counter. High-res digital video recorder with a programming interface. Reticulation scale. Mathematical table and interpolation texts. Texts on optical and compound microscopes. Micrometers, micro-calipers. Some six-foot two-by-fours. Nails, screws, some other hand tools. And some drafting paper and pencils. I'll probably start making him some drawings. The fact that he's a good technician will come in handy."

Wilson scribbled hastily. "Okay? Tell me about the dead baby. I noticed you haven't touched it."

"It's not just a sterile isolette. The kid had SCID."

Wilson looked completely blank for a moment. "Some Crazy Immune Disorder?"

"Not bad, Wilson. 'Bubble Boy Syndrome.' The pinnacle of immune problems. I went through the rest of the chart. Absent T-cells, low NK cells, B-cells on strike. Navajo type. One parent was half Navajo. Kid was approaching three months old with no failure to thrive; good muscle resistance. There is a germ that we have, that this boy doesn't. There's a problem with that."

"Which is?"

"This baby had E. Coli in his gut. E. Coli made in a lab from his parents' donations. Experimental treatment, you know the process?"

"Gut training with lab assist? That's where you isolate the one microbe by species? Painstaking work. Then put it in under controlled conditions."

"Right with the food. What're those gems with the round top and the flat bottom?"

Wilson blinked. "Cabochons?"

"Cabochons. Four or five perfectly circular cabochons of various thicknesses of every translucent gem he can find in every color. No flaws. Samples of amber from various historical eras. We may need them to change the refraction rate. While he's at it, tell him to grab some findings and jewelry-making stuff. I miss Ann, and making her a gift might settle my nerves. You can tell her you picked out the stuff for it. I'll want a rock polisher too, for the amber samples."

Wilson nodded slowly. "She said she likes opals. Why is a man who doesn't know who he is more dangerous?"

House stopped scribbling an equation. He turned to Wilson. "Moral code is a part of identity. You've heard the phrase 'core values?' You've also heard people say they 'weren't the type' to do things? Anyone who actually manages to foil him might find he's willing to become a genuine sociopath for a bit. He did promise he wouldn't hurt us when we fail, but is he really a man of his word? How can he be, when he doesn't know who he is? You realize, of course, he's probably punishing himself for not saving someone. Someone he cared about a LOT more than he cares about us—or himself."

Wilson frowned, eyes widening. "Well that—that I can imagine. People who knew him would have depended on him. He's alone. The mask could be penance for not living up to he was. For shame." Wilson looked troubled. He nodded. "All right. I can get you office supplies right away, obviously. I'll go see what we have left." He exited the viewing room. House stifled a smile, turning back to the white board.

HHHHHHHHHH

Wilson was hunched over the desk, frowning, when the masked man silently came to the door of the office. The masked man leaned on the doorframe to speak. "Physics isn't your usual subject, doctor."

Wilson startled, then made a hesitant smile. "I'm worried."

"That would be why you didn't give him any hand tools, just the office supplies. You're worried he'll try something."

"I'm . . . worried about both of you."

"That's natural. I'm your captor, and he's not known for stability."

"I should ask you whether there's anything you want to talk about."

"You mean, other than my goals."

"Well, yes. House didn't really go through shock when the world ended the way most of us did. He saved me probably a hundred times just between the first two locations we moved through. He's going through it now, I think. Did you? I mean, did you have anyone to help you through things at first?"

"I was used to handling things alone before. The people I knew died too quickly for me to help. Some of the people I would have been tempted to NOT save died too quickly for me to react."

Wilson nodded. "So you figured it was time to go federal, rather than local."

"I helped a few hundred people. I made some moats around a few buildings and killed thousands of the dead before I 'went federal,' but yes. No one as capable as me was as detached as I was. So I recruited some local talent for some resources and data toward my goals and dropped them off afterwards with supplies as payment. It's a pattern I quickly adapted and stuck with."

"If you never torture us, I'm going to ask Ann Gee to come with me and accompany you, even if House doesn't want to come. Thanks to him, I've been cancer-free for five years this time."

The masked man cocked his head. "I don't think I'll be asking any of you along, though I will ask you to expect my return and drop copies of your work for my retrieval in the meantime. I'll show you how I want you to code your drops and point me to them. Any ATM less than a mile from a highway will do. I'm going to leave you ten weatherproof containers and enough rechargeable batteries and charging systems to last about a decade. I'll keep practicing and learning on my own in the meantime."

Wilson nodded. "So you really are planning on leaving, like I thought. When are you going?"

"I'll be leaving as soon as House has done as much as I think he can. I will be going tonight for supplies and tomorrow to fill the other requests he's made. Do you think he can really make a multi-stage compound microscope with gemstone lenses?"

"That's—part of what I was trying to look up. Apparently the fewer lenses used and the more perfect the material, the better. There's some constants here I'm not familiar with. It LOOKS like the goal would be to beat four thousand times magnification, but at that ratio? Clarity would be sacrificed even with immersion oil. He was unusually honest about wanting a side project and even more unusually willing to keep working."

"And that scared you." The masked man nodded. "I'll be visiting him shortly. Ann has agreed to come with me tonight. She made dinners for us to reheat and went to bed. You might not tell House that." The masked man walked out.

HHHHHHHH

A panel in the lab ceiling opened, and the masked man slid down a small length of rope, playing it out from a small cloth bag as he descended. House barely looked up from the drawing he was working on. The masked man sat on a stool and waited for House to look up again. As House looked up, the masked man tossed a small parcel onto the nearest table. "I'm glad to see you've been productive. Why do you want gems instead of glass lenses for the microscope?"

"I'm figuring the expense won't matter, so it's time to find out if I can change the distortion rate of the light coming through. If it works, I won't even need Koehler illumination equipment."

"Why not an electron microscope?"

"Because the CDCs had those. If I'm going to outdo them, I probably don't need to use the exact same things they had access to. They likely already did all that could be done with them."

"Possibly. Why amber from different epochs? Shouldn't it have the same diffraction properties?"

"Oh, God, no. The difference in background radiation as it formed would alter its distortion qualities. Go ahead and bring the ones with bugs inside for comparison. I'll use the Geiger counter on them as an extra check. I want tapered fiber optic cable most of all."

"Why?"

"I can only think of one major reason why none of the pros at the CDC would have found what I can hope to find. That would be some sort of fragility to the phenomenon. We don't have time to develop brand new chemical agents to do the work with, so I'm going to have to try another form of microscopy. I need to add two things to the request list."

"Those being?"

"GFP. It's a fluorescent protein, good for certain kinds of microscopy. I've no idea how to find it. Then I'll need access to the gym. When I have this thing ready to test, I'm going to need to test it on dead that are walking. Hence the micromanipulators and fiber optic cable."

"You want to push the microscope INSIDE the dead and look at them while they're still moving!"

"And feed the data into a computer so I can get a good look through a digital camera. They called them micrographs. We'll be attempting 'videonanography.' What can you give me today?"

"Most of the electronic gear. Tomorrow I can manage some jewelry equipment and two crash helmets. Wilson will have access to a drill press downstairs and a few hand tools, but I've specifically told him not to bring them to you. The drill press is too bulky to bring up here anyway. I'll be going out tomorrow night for more. That's Vicodin and more Jolly Ranchers. You have some sketches for me?"

House pointed to another table. The masked man walked over to a stack of small, flattened boxes and turned them over. He cocked his head at the sketches. "A merry-go-round?"

"Not so merry. Like a 'dirge-go-round' or a carousel du mort. No calliope music on this one."

The masked man shook his head. "That would lurch pretty badly."

"I'm suggesting we physically cut the tall ones down if necessary to make their strides the same. After a while, they generally pace each other anyway, right?"

The masked man shook his head again. "I'll be gone longer than planned. I'll have to leave Wilson in charge of rationing food and water. Four to five days, leaving tomorrow. Wilson will be along later with today's items." He placed a small bottle on a table, turned, leapt for the rope, climbed hand over hand out of sight, and locked a panel in place over the hole he left through.

House looked at the bottle. "Rum flavoring? Huh. So this is what Ann Gee feels like when she's paid." Stifling a smile, he turned back to the whiteboard.

 _ **Hmm. Yeah, he's up to SOMETHING. Please read and review. If you're interested in the background sciences, SCID is real and has a Navajo type, the physics and microscopy problems I've mentioned are real, and the GFP and equipment and terms are real, except the one House 'made up.' Naturally not everything House said is perfectly true . . .**_


	15. Walking Dead, The Masked Man, & Ann Gee

_**Once again, in this piece and the one under edit, I'll be referencing a few things that are technologically feasible, based on the history of a decade ago, rather than today. Don't let it throw you. Locations are fictional, and I still don't own the character hidden in the masked man or those listed in the profile. I am also not a paid advertiser or representative for Super Eight, Windex, or any other product or service named here. Enjoy the ride.**_

Walking Dead, The Masked Man, And Ann Gee

The peculiar, sectioned vehicle scooped four dead from the pavement as it came to a stop on the dark highway interchange blocked with cars. Three of the dead landed with a sickening crunch and stopped moving. The fourth, having landed on one of the others, slowly made its way to a standing position. The lead section's door swung upwards. The masked man stepped out, pulled out the charging conveyor and one grille, and walked up to the dead man. The dead man, which wore a suit shredded in the front, began to step toward the masked man. The masked man seized his left arm and spun him around. The arm came off. The masked man recovered his balance and stuffed the dead arm into the mouth of the dead man as it lunged forward at him. The masked man seized the dead man's right arm and twisted it behind the back, forcing the dead man up onto the conveyor extending from the last section of the vehicle. Closing the second grille around the dead man, the masked man stepped over to the second vehicle section and opened the door. Ann Gee swung her shapely legs out and stood. "Yes?"

"I'm very tired. It's not going to stay dark much longer. The road atlas is all I have of this area, and most of the signs are down. One of these exits is for the Clellan Conference Center. We need to stay close." He handed her a headset with odd-looking goggles. "Wilson said you're good at picking out places to loot. Pick the closest place we can hole up for the day. Road access like a large street motorcycle. We've got to hide it and ourselves in comfort till nightfall."

Ann Gee looked at the headset. "How does this work?"

"Left-hand toggle changes from night vision to infrared to ultraviolet. Right toggle changes to and from distance gridlines. We don't want any buildings with orange or yellow heat signatures. Those are the living. Dead are blue to green on infrared if they're moving."

"Cool." Ann Gee put it on and started panning around. "Why here?"

"Pamphlets in that last jewelry store said there was a gem show opening in the conference center the Monday after things went crazy here. Over a hundred vendors. Gems have very little survival value. Some of them may have arrived early and be ripe for the picking. The weekend was the close of the medical equipment conference. There may be some gear left. Some samples, some manuals, something."

After examining nearly halfway around the horizon, Ann pointed and handed over the headset. "No living, I guess. There's the center, I think. Looks overrun. Next door there? To the left? Super Eight. No movement, no heat. I could use a real bed after sitting in one position for four hours. I'm going over there." She started across the bridge toward a large truck, demonstratively shaking a roll of toilet paper.

"Be careful." The masked man studied the buildings through the goggles for several seconds, examining the route there, the shape of the lots, the heat vents protruding from the buildings. "Looks good to me." He pulled out three fist-sized bundles and checked wires on each. He magnetically stuck all three to the side of the vehicle. "Remote flash bangs," he said in explanation.

"Stuck to us?" said Ann Gee, returning.

"I'll remotely turn off the electromagnets when I want them to fall. They won't go off till later, when I trigger them. I'll drive the long way around and drop them at convenient spots for a diversion." He motioned her back inside, shut her door, and paused. He looked at the walking dead man charging his vehicle for a moment. The masked man pulled a toolbelt out of the vehicle. Putting it on, he rapidly walked to a pickup truck with a winch on its front. He took the hook end of the cable and pulled it to a car. Feeding the end through the missing front windshield, he put a boot against the open door's window and pushed, popping it out. He fed the end through the newly missing window and stopped for a moment, listening.

He waved dismissively at his vehicle, where he had heard Ann Gee tapping. He picked up the cracked window from the pavement where it had fallen and spun, decapitating the first dead person to come between the cars. He placed the window upright between the bumpers of two cars to block two more coming and turned to loop part of the winch cable around the neck of another. Dragging it along, he played out a bit more cable and lashed out a loop like a whip. The blow severed the spine of a fourth, causing it to collapse, tripping the fifth one behind it. He tightened the cable, tearing the head off the looped one. He swung the weighted end out, clubbing a sixth.

As the first two blundering dead knocked the car window aside, he ran three steps back to them and kicked the lead hard enough in the chest that it bashed heads with the one behind. They both fell. He pulled a screwdriver and ended those two and the other two that were still moving. He played out more cable. He rapidly fed the length around a wheel each of three other cars, crisscrossing cable about knee height above the road. He spent another ten minutes breaking ignition locks, releasing parking brakes, and putting cars into neutral.

A single blow with a mallet and screwdriver opened a car trunk. He pulled out a crate of food. He stowed it in the third section of the vehicle and opened another car trunk in the same manner. He pulled out a tow chain and an old-style four-way lug wrench. He tangled the lug wrench in the crisscrossed winch cable. He wound half the length of the tow chain thoroughly around the tangled winch cable and lug wrench. He ran back to the third section of his vehicle, pulled out a pack, closed the door, and ran back to the reinforced tangle. He carefully wound some sturdy wire from a pouch and more tow chain around the pack, avoiding the pack's top. Ducking down, he yanked a cord. A full-sized World War Two parachute opened without fully extending. He hauled the upper part of the chute across the top of the cars, and fastened a plastic cover to the air vent with epoxy. He reached into back seats to grab three umbrellas and a few empty cardboard boxes, stuffed them into the canvas bulk, wired the boxes and umbrellas together, opened the umbrellas, and dropped the whole mass over the rail. Looking at his work for a moment, he nodded and walked back to his vehicle. He opened the second compartment, handing Ann Gee an MRE.

"I thought you said you were tired?"

"I am."

"Oka—aay. What's the parachute for?"

"Clearing the road a bit." He closed her door, got in, and closed his door. They slowly started away, destroying their undead generator as the hardware retracted. About forty-one minutes later, rain began to fall. Slowly at first, the rain built to a crescendo on the metal roofs. The parachute cords thrummed with the tension and rhythm of the rain collecting in the chute. Slowly, the rain's rhythm and weight began to vibrate the reinforced winch cable tangle and pull it toward the side of the bridge. There was a quiet grinding of metal on metal as the tow chain, winch cable, and metal wire tightened and deformed slightly around each other. The cars moved gradually toward the side of the bridge, rolling over the fallen dead. After eleven minutes of slow movement, the plastic cover broke loose from the epoxy, and rainwater cascaded out of the parachute.

The downpour continued for twenty-four minutes at a furious pace and then slowed to a drizzle. There was three-quarters of a lane unblocked.

HHHHHHHH

House narrowed his eyes at Wilson on the other side of the glass. "And did Ann Gee tell you to tell me anything today?"

"No. She didn't really say anything to me today."

House frowned deeper. "She didn't go with him, did she?"

Wilson blinked in surprise, then shrugged. "Yes. It surprised me. I thought she just wanted to go out for a day. Looting. She's good at it and seemed to miss it. Then when she came back, she told me she was going for longer and showed me how to make nut bread. That's peanut bread we had for lunch."

"I guessed. You know he's dangerous. We could lose her and not know it till we run out of rations and have to break out of here or die."

"He signals me at sunset to let me know they're okay."

"Signals?! How does he signal you?"

Wilson looked at the watch he wound daily. "He uh, has a machine."

"What kind of machine?"

"It locates bugs. He turns his on and off four times at sunset so I know he's okay."

"A tracking device?"

"Yes."

"How many bugs can it measure?"

"He has twelve active right now. I log their movements from time to time. Three are never on grid. Nine of them are mostly circulating around Negan's direction."

"Quixote has a catch and release program." House shook his head. "He may have been telling the truth about letting us go." He nodded with a worried frown.

HHHHHHHH

Ann Gee looked doubtfully at the device being rapidly assembled by the masked man. It had four rotors like a helicopter and several small devices attached to its lightweight frame that she couldn't even identify. She looked doubtfully at the masked man, who hadn't even come on to her, though she had known by his breathing that morning he wasn't sleeping well on the floor of the room she'd chosen. Then she looked doubtfully at the odd-shaped pistol he was holding out to her. "You want me to what?"

"Fire into the crowd down there. It's silent. Powered by air cartridges."

"I can't hit anything."

"It's an entire crowd of walking corpses. You probably can't miss." He had pulled out a roll of double-faced tape and was covering the back of a chair with it. "Mostly I just need five or six of them hit so I can track the crowd while I do something else." He picked up the chair and stood it on the table. Then he pressed the chair back against the clean spot he'd made on the window with the Windex and towel from the cleaning carts he'd collected in the hallway. He pulled a glass cutter out of his toolbelt and made a rough circle around the chair back. "Just aim at the center of the crowd and squeeze the trigger six times. Then move so I can close this quickly. Ready?"

Ann Gee looked at him with even more doubt. "Is there a safety?" She took the air gun.

"No."

She put on the headset. "Then I'm ready."

The masked man swiveled the chair inward, popping the piece of window loose. Ann Gee took a perfect Weaver stance, stepped forward, shot six times, pulled back, lowered the air gun, and removed the headset. The masked man returned the chair to its position, closing the window cut. He powered up the tablet beneath the chair legs and looked at the three moving dots and the three still dots. He cocked his head. "You actually did miss with three of them."

"I told you."

"Hold your fingers straight out at me?"

Ann put the gun and the headset on the table and held out the middle finger of each hand straight at the masked man. He studied the way her hands wavered and sagged.

The masked man walked to the nightstand between the two beds. He pulled the phone jack out of the phone and walked back to her. He put the phone in her left hand and the handset in her right as she looked at him quizzically. "You need more shoulder stamina. Your aim is fine, but, by the time you aim, your arms are drooping lower. Hold that at arm's length in front of you counting to ten. Four times. Sets twice daily to the front, maybe twice daily to the sides. Add a third set of each in a month. You'll start hitting more targets."

Ann Gee blinked. "If I'm drooping like a spent john, shouldn't I just shoot faster?"

"No. That comes later, after you get used to hitting what you aim at. You need to be able to judge what recoil does to your muscles to give yourself time to readjust your aim for your next shot."

"Were you military? You remind me of a Special Ops guy I was with for a bit."

"No. Practice." The masked man looked back at the tablet as Ann Gee began her isometrics.

"What's that seventh dot?" She said breathlessly after a set. She put down the phone and rubbed her shoulders. "All the way at the edge there?"

"Your boyfriends. They'll probably stay where they are, but it's good to check."

"They're not really my boyfriends. We have an arrangement."

"Ah." He turned back to assembling the device with the rotors.

"I sleep with who I want."

"BECAUSE you want them?"

She lowered her eyes. "No. I want them to keep me safe. To take care of me. Wilson, he would do that, but wouldn't be a hero for me. House would be a hero, but wouldn't take care of me. They would both be my doctor if I need it. Wilson would fix my colds and woman troubles. House would fix me if I got something I never heard of. I sleep with them, and either of them do both. Together they make a perfect man."

"That's well-arranged. So you're out here looking for adventure."

"I've not been with this few men for so long since I was fifteen. You don't seem like you want me. But you're not gay. You'd have scoped out Wilson, maybe hinted at him."

"I'm—not on the market."

"You don't want anyone to know you by your face or voice, either. Very strange. Not like we can go to the police and say 'who was that masked man?' He kidnapped us!" She suddenly frowned at him and put a hand on her hip. "You brought that dead woman in curlers to me, didn't you? To distract me when you take me so I not hear you coming."

"Diversions are the way to go when capturing someone quickly." The masked man shrugged, putting down a wire stripper. He picked up a precision screwdriver and tightened another tiny screw.

Ann Gee studied him for a moment. A sad expression flitted across her face. She picked up the phone and handset and resumed her isometrics. By the time she called it quits, he had the thing on the bed together. "What's UAV stand for anyway?" she finally said.

 _ *****Just for clarification, UAV was the common term for a drone about a decade ago when most people agree TWD first started. The military had already been using them for quite a while, but hadn't really made that knowledge public. 'Drone' as a term was only just becoming known as slang for a UAV, and wouldn't have been on any of the packaging for Ann Gee to have seen. The design hasn't changed noticeably to a layman. Tablets would have been recognizable if not so prevalent. For continuity's sake, this road trip is in a different direction, miles away from CSMS which is miles away from the Negan sequestering in Sanctuary, which may be almost over, and is far enough away, therefore, that if that helicopter Rick saw is real, it would go unnoticed by the masked man's surveillance equipment. Now back to the action.**_

"You'll see. For now I need your help flattening some flatware. Have a seat." He motioned to a chair. She sat down. He kicked a small, ragged roll of scrap linoleum to unroll across the carpet between them. He lifted his left foot and began strapping a bathroom tile to the bottom of his boot with a pair of children's belts. "See that first shopping bag? Pull out the forks and spoons. Drop three to four at a time between us. After I step on them all, sweep them to the carpet with the broom and drop some more." He strapped another tile to the bottom of his right boot. "Go." He picked up the tablet.

As she tossed the second group of flatware on the linoleum, the rotors on the UAV began to spin. It raised to hover at five and half feet. It turned sideways and went out of the room.

"Faster," he said.

Ann Gee began tossing out five to six at a time with her left hand and bringing the broom across the linoleum immediately with her right, trying to beat him to the flatware. She quickly found she wasn't fast enough, though he was also paying attention to the tablet in his hands, flying the UAV. She tried feinting, she tried spreading the flatware grouping wider, and she tried scattering past his just-placed boot. At one point, he spun, putting his back to her and still stomped every fork and spoon she tossed.

She tossed the last fork on top of his left boot. He kicked it into the air, spun, and back-kicked it. It stuck into the wall above a bed. "Damn," she said, nodding. He took off the tiles and held them out to her. "Next bag is all you."

Ann Gee did a fair job of imitating most of the moves she'd seen him do after a bit of practice—at a slower speed. When she was finished, she flopped down onto the bed, panting. "Ow," she said, and pulled a crescent wrench out from under her left shoulder blade.

"Sorry. Have a look." He turned the tablet toward her. The footage he'd recorded of the UAV's path was in night vision, clearly showing in sickly green the crowd of walking corpses milling in small circles around each other in the conference center parking lot. The UAV's camera caught a glimpse of a crow caught in a live animal trap on the roof of the hotel. Then the footage showed a flight to the conference center, entry to a crowded, decorative lobby timed between dead grabbing hands. Next was a flight above the dead on an escalator, up to the second floor where the dead were few and into large rooms set up with dozens of tables where the dead moved in yet smaller numbers. Then there came a flight returning out of the conference center and across a small parking lot to perch on a billboard, out of reach of the outstretched, rotting arms. The tablet screen paused.

"How far can you run faster than they can lunge?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't try THAT."

The masked man looked out the window and strapped his toolbelt back on. "They're clearing out. If I get your blood pumping, could you carry the crow at a light run? Just to the escalator."

"I think so."

"Stay here. Four minutes. Be ready to leave."

"What about all that flatware?"

"I'll pack that up when I get back. I use a magnet." He silently ran out the door.

Ann Gee used the restroom, pilfered the toilet paper, the hand towels, and all the other small items she could fit in her over-sized purse, and was leaning on the doorframe when he came running out of the open elevator shaft with the squawking crow in the trap. He placed it on a cleaning cart and ran into the room. He tore the spread from a bed, rolling it loosely, and tossed it over his left shoulder. He pulled out his coil gun and waved it over the floor, stooping only slightly as he collected the flatware in the shopping bag. Tucking the tablet into his front waistband, he ran back to the crow, motioning Ann Gee to follow him. He slid the whole trap into the rolled-up bedspread, muffling the crow, and handed it to Ann. "Got it?"

It lurched in her hands. "Maybe," said Ann Gee.

"Don't let go of it. We're skipping the stairs."

With only the light from the windows in the open rooms, the hallway was already dark. The elevator shaft was pitch black. "I can't," she said, "Can't breathe in there."

"I remember you don't like small spaces, Ann. But this is a whole elevator shaft."

"What happened to the elevator? We're on the third floor!"

"It's down on the basement level with the dead. We're rappelling down the cable."

"I can't rappel!"

"You hold the crow. I'll hold you."

"Who's gonna hold you?!"

He reached into the blackness with his right hand and pulled out a metal hook. He fastened it to something hidden by his collar and pulled Ann Gee to his waist with his left. He jumped. She shrieked all the way down.

 _ **Not far from the momentary goal. Why the crow? Please read and review. From content plans, next week will be MUCH shorter.  
**_


	16. You Can Save Or Be Saved By A Stripper

_**I'm sure some of you were looking forward to THIS . . .**_

You Can Save Or Be Saved By A Stripper

The peculiar, sectioned, knife-shaped vehicle slowed to a stop in an alley. The masked man exited the lead section and opened the second, allowing Ann Gee to step out. He handed a badly crumpled map to her and started peering around.

"I don't get it," she said, "You can't just divert them with those remote things?"

"If I'm going to control how the dead continue to power the cell tower with that whole escalator as a treadmill, I'm going to need large amounts of controlled burning to gradually herd them there. I can rig a few hoses and downspouts to do most of the channeling, but I'm going to need a few cases of alcohol. I've got aquarium motors rigged to remotes to feed in small amounts at a time. I just need the alcohol."

"Can't you ferment some apple juice? We must have passed three orchards on the way."

"It would take too long to set up, and it might not work. Apple moonshine is a little unpredictable. Any luck?"

"You're right. The notes say there's a big delivery every weekend to right here. But that's a church."

"Baptist. Very dry-looking. No entrance, anyway. Trash from a chute above."

She turned to look at the other alley wall. "This sign says 'Druther's Electronics. I don't see a tavern elevator anywhere. That other window had a sign—"

The masked man took another glance around the alley. "It said 'moved' and an address. It was a bank, anyway. No freight elevator of any kind. Recessed dumpsters. Two for each building. I found where someone came out here to smoke."

Ann Gee turned to examine the extremely weathered cigarette butts on the pavement to the right of the recessed door. She stared for a moment at the door. She stepped into the recess and turned to face the alleyway. "What's that?" She pointed straight across the alley.

The masked man didn't even turn. "Bracket. Maybe to hang a sign or a visibility mirror. This alleyway is curved slightly. A mirror made just so could pick out people coming in the end of it from there." He turned then and looked again. "A double mirror could see both ends. What are you thinking? Illegal sales? Inventory theft drop?"

"I was thinking a delivery truck pulls up here behind a car. He gets out and puts some booze in the car's trunk. Then he gets in the car and—puts his thing in the DRIVER'S trunk. This is where they'd have cigarettes after—or maybe before if one of the guys was late."

The masked man cocked his head. "Oh. No lipstick stains on the cigarettes. More than one brand. We won't find the booze then."

"But no, that's not it. Can you pick this lock?"

"Probably. You think the booze is in there?"

"Yeah. Let me take this one. You keep watch."

"Okay," the masked man knelt gracefully, drawing a lock pick and began, "You know I haven't laughed in—well, years."

"Made up for it today. I thought you were going to kill me."

"I would have stayed mad. At first I didn't realize you'd made sure they were all faceted stones. Turning that bin over under their feet was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Gem-encrusted walking corpses! Your invention." He stood up.

"Gem-encrusted dead PRATFALLS. My invention." She smiled and opened the door, brandishing a long kitchen knife. "It DID slow them down on the steps, there." He saluted her with a small flashlight and handed it to her. "Don't point that directly at the headgear," he said, "It can temporarily stun." She nodded and trotted in, adjusting the headgear's chin strap.

A few moments later she bounced out eagerly, saying, "You GOTTA come see this. You got lanterns?"

He nodded, stepped to the vehicle, and pulled out three large lantern-style flashlights with homemade external battery clips. He snapped a battery onto each and started to walk in behind her. He hung the headgear on his toolbelt as she handed him a mirror shaped like a triangular prism and took the flashlights. "It was on the bar," she said, and he nodded, turned, walked out, hung the mirror, and returned. He stepped in to see—

A stage with three stripper poles, neatly curtained, with a stereotypical-looking jukebox at the back wall. Pushing a case of Hennessy across the floor was Ann Gee. "There's three more behind the bar and some other stuff, but you need to see the E-M-T-500!" She pointed to the wall behind the stripper poles.

"We're not here for entertainment. Besides, music would probably attract the dead. Maybe from the rest of this office building."

"It's not just for entertainment. I think it could help you. And look at the walls! They're padded for sound. You know if the church people next door could hear this place, this place would be boarded up or something."

The masked man turned, picked up a flashlight and examined the wall and the door. Even the panel that opened to look out at the hanging mirror was padded. "Hmm. What kind of help are we talking about?"

"You've—mentioned questioning people you kidnap. You hinted at torture. I remember a t.v. show that said torture isn't very effective. But there IS something that's effective. I don't know exactly how it works, but you should be able to make it work for you somehow. It's humane, and, as far as I know, it's a hundred percent effective."

"You don't know how it works?"

"But I can demonstrate it! Ten minutes. Please? I read about this machine and always wanted to try it. I could get information from YOU, and you wouldn't even notice!"

The masked man cocked his head. "What do you need?"

"Oh. Well, okay, we need the thing that looks like a jukebox rolled halfway up to the middle stripper pole. And AC power."

"For ten minutes? Is it one-ten or two-twenty?"

She looked blankly at him and opened a pamphlet. She skimmed it for a moment. "One-ten."

He nodded. "We can spare that." He checked the view and walked out to return in a moment with a football-sized device. He plugged three baseball-sized, matte-black batteries to it and showed her the outlet. She waited as he, grunting, pushed the EMT500 toward her.

"Wrap the cord around the pole twice at knee level," she said suddenly. The masked man cocked his head and did as she asked. She plugged in the cord. "Now the questions to make sure I get accurate results. I think we can skip the health and vision questions. 'Have you spent more than two years abroad?'"

The masked man cocked his head again. "Yes."

"Have you spent two years in Asia as an adult, one year in Asia as a young child, or been raised in a chiefly Asian community or family?"

"Yes. I thought you said you'd get information without me noticing."

"You'll see. Are you currently diagnosed with any mental disorder excluding depression or having any suicidal thoughts?"

"No."

"Do you have any facial tics or spasms of the eye?"

"No."

Ann Gee typed 'one-one-zero-zero' into the instrument panel. "Please look into the viewer."

The masked man positioned his eyes over the viewer, just a screen where the window showing records would be, as it pulsed with muted color. She watched him intently for over a minute. "What did you see?"

"I saw eighteen pages of lingerie. Three barely dressed silhouettes to each page. I don't see how this is helpful."

Ann Gee hesitated. "Lean back." She opened the instrument panel, which looked vaguely like an old-fashioned coin slot. "You see all that? Not just a viewer."

"It does look more complicated than that."

"This next part is faster. 'Don't try to read the words, because that can cause eye strain, nausea, and motion sickness in some cases.' Look in the viewer again."

After a moment, the masked man wobbled. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He cleared his throat and straightened. "I did try to read it. Sorry."

Ann Gee caught her breath and raised her eyebrows, looking at a readout. She nodded. She pushed a button marked 'Clear' and trotted over to the bar. She brought back a stool. "Have a seat," she said, locking in settings and powering down the device. "I'll be right back to finish this. There's some stuff I hadn't planned on—won't take me too long." She ran through the back curtain. Two minutes later she ran out quietly, wearing a long, shapeless coat over her clothes. She flipped the 'on' switch. "Your eyes automatically linger on what you like more or what you feel more strongly about. The EMT500 watches your eyes as you're presented with choices."

"There were repeats of lingerie."

"Lingerie isn't all it does. Subconsciously you picked out your favorite outfit, your most meaningful lyrics, and—more! You could find out a lot about someone with this if you figured out how to use it for what YOU want. The last part is a bit different." She opened the back of the unit and pulled out a bright blue wire globe. "Can you hold this against the back of my left knee?" She stood facing him, holding the pole with her right hand.

He took the globe with his left hand, took a knee, and reached out to pull the globe to her knee with his right hand. As he gripped the globe around her leg, the blue wire globe twisted in on itself, snapping tightly around his wrists. Ann Gee yanked the electrical cord against it and pulled with her whole weight leaning polewards—and the masked man found himself kneeling on the stage with his wrists tied to the pole, arms still around her left leg. She tossed the shapeless dress to reveal a Supergirl costume—red thigh-high boots with gold trim, red flirt skirt, and a blue skin-tight top, showing off her amazing figure. She lifted the skirt to reveal the wonderfully curvy nakedness beneath. She lifted her right knee and swung her leg over the masked man's head to turn and show off her lovely posterior just centimeters from his face. As the EMT500 quietly began to play a snippet of "Somebody Save Me" by Remy Zero, she gently twerked and ground against the pole, bending then to hold his hands together and thrust herself ever closer.

The lyrics went "—sa-aaaave meeeee! Don't care HOW ya do-ooo it—sta-aaayee, sta-aaayee, come O-o-on . . ." As the music began to falter, she snapped to a full standing position. She turned her head to see a dead blonde wearing a skimpy summer dress limp through the back curtain, trailing a rope tied around her left leg. Ann Gee snapped the machine 'off.' "Don't you DARE move," she snarled, "I'm saving YOU."

She turned her body toward the dead blonde. "Look here, you BITCH! Your kind might get him someday, sure. But right now, he's MINE!" She unsheathed her left leg from between his arms like a weapon, seized the pole, spun around it and kicked the dead woman right in the left eye with her right boot heel. The corpse collapsed with a sickeningly wet crunch. Ann Gee came out of her spin. "Now where were we?" She smiled wickedly. He turned his head to look behind her. She looked behind herself. He didn't see her shocked expression, looking at the four dead half-naked women ambling out onto the stage. "Um? No. I—I got it." She ran two steps, front-kicked the lead into the next two, lunged sidelong past them and tore the curtain down onto the group. Seizing two parts of the curtain, she yanked them toward the stage left stripper pole and tied a quick granny knot. Snatching up an old Heineken bottle from the edge of the stage, she stabbed the first dead eye she saw and tried for a second. The bottle broke.

"FUCK!" She front-kicked the mass of curtain-covered bodies twice, smashing them into the pole. She stepped off the stage and picked up a chair and a trashcan. She upended the trashcan over the dead woman that had almost escaped from the tangle, further tangling the group, and began thrashing the group with the chair. On the twelfth impact of the chair with the curtain-covered swarming mass, there was another wet crunch, and the moving stopped.

Gasping for breath, her peripheral vision caught something in the mirror above the bar that brought an invulnerable smile to her face . . . he was putting his hands BACK INTO THE WIRE GLOBE. Stifling a giggle, she flounced up to the stage door and locked it. She picked up a can of air freshener and liberally sprayed the tangle of dead bodies and the one closer to the pole. Then she took off the skirt completely and got right back to where she had been. He nudged the side of her twerking buttocks with his forehead until she turned to face him—and he made it worth her while with his mask bunched up to his nose. When she couldn't stand in that position anymore, she knelt and returned the favor till he stopped her.

"We're not just gonna eat and run, are we?" She teased.

Tossing the blue wire globe to one side, he seized her, turned her upside down, and gently laid down on the stage, reminding her that two experiences can be enjoyed simultaneously.

 _ **Okay, so twerking and Smallville were both a thing before TWD. Stylized restraints, such as the blue wire globe have been on the market since the 'eighties. The 'EMT500' is perfectly feasible as well, and might in theory be applied to interrogation. Because the eye DOES act as Ann Gee describes. Really the technology has been around since the 'seventies. All you need is a device to watch and time eye movements, software to evaluate preferences between visual samples, a viewer to display those samples at speed, and, well, the samples themselves. Any living, healthy, sane, and sighted human brain will accomplish the rest. A psychological study in the 'nineties claimed that people who have had early exposure to violence or lived with a lot of it tend to prefer '69.'  
**_

 _ **Hope you've enjoyed so far. Thank you again to FanDance for the information about restraints, stripper poles, and shoulder stamina. Please read and review.**_


	17. Can Magnets, Blurs, And Amber Be The Key

_**Thank you, 'niph,' for those words of encouragement. I'll be announcing (finishing) quite soon now. Well, that was fun. Now . . . for the BAD news . . .**_

Can Magnets, Blurs, And Amber Be The Key?

House smiled as the masked man tightened the last nut on their carousel. Carousel du mort, indeed. The masked man had actually found four dead with non-squishy-seeming brains within an eighth of an inch of having identical strides, revamped the plans to work nearly exactly like a four-horse carousel, and assembled the pieces of wood, plastic, and metal cut by himself, House, and Wilson in a remarkably short time. Shortly, the installed helmets would be full, and the weirdest microscope ever conceived would be online.

The masked man sat down on a stool. House was staring again at the walking dead. The gym, connected to the lab now by a short hallway WAS a strange look, twenty dead men and women powering treadmills to generate electricity. "I no longer think it looks like a demented 'come as you are' party, or, technically, a 'come as you died' party. It looks like a public service announcement. 'Don't skip your cardio. Your hell will be the Undead Gym for eternity.' No Jacuzzi." The masked man actually glanced up and nodded. House suddenly looked up. "Well, we're ready for the horses, then, Mr. Quixote. Not a windmill, exactly, but she'll do!"

It was a matter of minutes for the masked man to manhandle the four premeasured dead with tiny, pre-drilled skull holes into the carousel's restraints, lock them in, and lower the helmets. From each helmet, a pair of lengths of tapered fiber optic cable in an insulated sheath with tiny moving fins stretched through multiple remote adjusting mechanisms to the central canopy. Four plastic pipes extended three feet upwards from the canopy, each riddled with more adjusting mechanisms, mostly sliding clamps for the cabochon lenses. Each pipe was capped with a digital video camera, wifi unit, and power station. House rapidly through four switches. "Lights—on; you know, without the dead it looked like da Vinci had met Fred Sanford and Tesla. This is much better. Much more mad scientist. MuAH-HAHAHAHA!"

Wilson silently shook his head, looking at the terminal in the corner. "These are going to be the fuzziest images of my professional career. Mad, indeed." He shook his head again.

"Don't worry, Wilson!" House looked ready to dance with joy, despite his leg, "These won't count as unprofessional; you're not getting PAID!" He limped over to the largest table, now covered with computer equipment. He started throwing switches, alternately glancing up at the multiple screens and down at the switches. Soon, four terminals each glowed with a different color: Deep red, powder blue, light green, and a brassy yellow. Vague, blurred, organic shapes began to swim by on each at a rate too sickeningly fast to watch. Then the images moved faster, losing resolution. Tables of ones and zeroes flashed by on yet another screen.

"That's it," said Wilson, "By my readings, all four should be past the corpus callosum and at the edge of the amygdala. At least, that's where the probes are if your calculations are correct. Too bad we can't get any meaningful images." He gestured at the monitors, filled with blurred curves and vague shapes. "I can't tell a dendrite from empty space."

"You can't YET, Wilson. The final edit from the software's baseline isn't finished." House studied the monitors for a beat longer. "But now we see if we can achieve hindsight from the hindbrain. Quixote? Your turn. Lateral search pattern. We're looking for any lightness change around the Circle of Willis. It would look like a tiny, tiny sparkle, like Tinkerbell in the woods at night a half mile off."

The masked man cocked his head. "What are you—"

"Whachoo talkin' 'bout, Willis! That diagram right there." He tapped a page torn out of a medical text. It had guesstimated measurements annotated in ink.

The masked man sat at the micromanipulators and slowly used a joystick, leaving the other three joysticks alone. "Why there?"

"One of two things has to happen to make a human body stand up independently and walk without falling over. Either the inner ear has to work, or there has to be an on-board gyro. Since the eardrums have decayed and the pressure's all wrong for the inner ear, it's got to be a gyro of some kind."

Wilson sat back somewhat heavily. "You DID say germs don't run gyroscopes."

"I did. Now a gyro pretty much has to be a circle of motion. The only thing even REMOTELY circular as a pathway inside the base of the brain is the Circle of Willis. It's the only thing that allows circular motion inside the brain without circling the WHOLE brain."

"And circling the whole brain is bad because—?" the masked man was barely moving his hands, eyes riveted to the deep red screen.

"Because if anything pierced the spinal column ANYWHERE, that fluid would leak out. We've seen lots of them moving with relative balance missing feet, legs up to knees, half a torso, you know—we know they work without an intact cerebrospinal fluid containment. But blood vessels would maintain containment by clotting.

. . . So, there pretty much needs to be something spinning around in the blood vessels INSIDE the brain. It just doesn't have to be blood anymore."

The masked man kept working. Wilson folded his arms to argue. "House? Don't you think the CDC would have found a GYROSCOPE?"

"Nuh UHH!" House did a reasonable imitation of a four-year-old, and the classic nanny-nanny-boo-boo pose. "There's two reasons they wouldn't have: First, they wouldn't have imaged them standing up, so it wouldn't have needed to actually work at the time they imaged it. Second, their method of imaging probably destroyed the gyro, at least temporarily."

Wilson shook his head. "A structure that can't be imaged just because it's not working? What kind of structure is that?"

"An electromagnetic one that only works when the head is upright. Every imaging tech lays down their subject! Using X-rays or other means to excite electrons would temporarily destroy such a thing, or at least scatter its works a bit. MRI's, cat scans, they wouldn't work. Visible light or MAYBE fluorescence would be the only way to go! There's a fair chance fluorescent microscopy will mess it up, too. The scale is amazingly small. What's wrong?"

One of the dead stumbled. It resumed walking.

"I'm not sure," the masked man said, "But I think I'm in."

House cocked his head at the red screen and nodded. "Just circumnavigate it slowly. Then move on to the next one. You won't see much of anything till the software's done anyway. Remember, the others won't be the same, and they're not level. Watch the walls and be gentle. Wilson? You have to think of this as a VIRTUAL gyro. It doesn't work by inertia. It works because the circle disrupted is detectable."

The masked man carefully fed the fiber optic cable all the way around the Circle of Willis, based on diagrams on his tablet and the diagram from the book. The second attempt, the blue one, didn't work out. The dead body collapsed and did not move again. House stepped up wearing goggles and an apron and cut the neck with scissor-style hedge trimmers for the masked man to shove to one side. The third attempt resulted in a snarled cable halfway around. The fourth began to amble off-center so badly it twisted partly loose of the cable.

"My turn," said House, picking up another remote. He flipped a switch. He flipped another switch. All three dead went slack for a moment, then began to stand again. The masked man shot to his feet. House nodded. He did it again. And again. He did it a fourth time. Each time the dead slackened and went limp for a moment before staggering up to their feet. He nodded, satisfied.

"What was THAT?" said Wilson, "You can turn the dead off with a switch?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Wilson, I can't turn off anything but their balance and some of their motion . . . . And it resets between one and two seconds."

"One point seven three seconds, allowing for visual error." The masked man turned to House.

Wilson turned, saw the chronometer reading to the ten thousandth of a second on the monitor closest to him and nodded. "I'm—sure that's close enough for now. How did you do that?" He stood and started walking toward the carousel.

House pointed to an unused crash helmet on the table between Wilson and the masked man. With blinding speed, the masked man seized it and turned it upside down to look inside. The masked man studied it for a moment as Wilson arrived. "You've wired an electromagnet to swap polar direction."

House nodded, staring at the carousel du mort.

The masked man shook his head. "A gyro disrupted by opposing electrical force? That's . . . interesting."

House nodded and continued staring.

Wilson smiled. "That's WONDERFUL! We could give everyone an MRI, maybe, to keep them from turning? Or shock them with defibrillators?" He held up his hands—

"No," the masked man said quietly.

"Why not?"

House shrugged. "Go ahead and tell him."

The masked man turned to Wilson and put a hand on his shoulder. "What the 'gyro' is made of is just too small. To destroy whatever's doing this it would have to remove all microscopic iron particles from the body and anything touching it. These gyros are assembled inside the body, super-small and that means it takes a larger charge to remove them. It would take an MRI what, nine Tesla? They've never made one that strong that I know of."

House shrugged, "Maybe stronger."

"Then the electric current. If you tried that instead you'd have to electrify every cell enough to permanently disrupt the assembly and not allow any electrical activity if the carrier ever found its way in ever again. Probably easier just to burn the body."

Wilson shook his head. "Anything else?"

"Electromotor force," said House, pursing his lips, "If every cell was subjected to a—I don't know, a nine-ton hydraulic jack at the right moment, maybe it would prevent ever rebuilding, but the body would be reduced to slime long before that. What you have here is a mechanism that is more persistent than the body it controls. No practical solution here."

"Then why do it?" said Wilson, "You don't seem like you're just playing around."

"We're still recording," said House, "The data will include timestamps for when I disrupted the gyros. If we're lucky, startup will give us better data."

The masked man suddenly turned to one of his computers, attached a flash drive, and turned to one of the castoff computers on another table. "I may have something else," he said, "Wilson? Hand me that monitor?" Wilson slid a monitor over to him. The masked man plugged it in, plugged in a keyboard and a mouse, and started an initialization program. "One of the hospitals had a large psych ward that turned quickly, and the doctor trapped in the office kept taking notes on them. Security couldn't reach him because it was a low-security wing, and the dead patients—" He started typing. "They were all between the entrance and the office. He had plenty of time and equipment to observe the process before they beat the Lexan loose from the office windows. Even better, he had their complete medical files. I downloaded it all."

He typed three keys, pulling up a spreadsheet. He scrolled down. He highlighted one block and called up a screenshot of a medical log form. After a moment he nodded. "The only patient to take longer than three hours to turn after death had extreme anemia and had refused their iron supplements twice out of the last three days. Not very useful, but maybe important somehow. Individual retention of iron in the blood can be a factor in how long it takes to start balancing and walking."

House nodded. "We have independent confirmation. Full chelation could slow the process too, if a patient was given low-ferrous plasma. It still wouldn't be enough to save them or prevent anything. Eventually enough iron would be collected."

Wilson nodded. "Okay. So tell me how this gem scope is going to matter?"

House motioned the masked man to go ahead.

"House spent some of his time on the software programming how structures that are essentially the same could be overlaid, allowing for differences, and show the same data. He spent some time programming in different ways distortion could affect the visual data and ways to allow for it, to show a more accurate image despite it, like how good facial recognition software can allow for a person making faces or being in a bad picture. The computer picked the distortion manner from the way the view of the helmet aperture looked during initial twist and entry. So it will try to overlay all four views onto one less distorted by interpolation over multiple timestamps. So what we'll see will be a computer reconstructed, interpolated, and overlaid . . . videonanograph. There's only one part of this I don't understand."

Wilson startled, "What's that?"

"Why we went around the loop in each one. Wouldn't it have been better to simply enter the loop for a good view?"

House handed the masked man a small vial as he limped past to a stool and sat down with a good view of the biggest monitor.

The masked man read the label. "Iron filings?"

"I peppered the helmet aperture with that. Our overlong magnifying glass extruded through it, wiping them on every surface. These dead have an iron halo inside them. Most of it wiped off, especially nearer the tip. That will do three things: First, it will cause the gyro to be more easily disrupted. Second, it will clear away any organic matter that isn't a part of this, maybe give us a better view. That one that failed? I think the gyro magnetized the cable briefly. The data from that point on would be different enough to exclude. Third, the halo gyro might be as big as a hair now instead of a few electrons thick."

He sat for another moment, studying the timer. He tapped a key on the nearest keyboard. The screen filled with large brown squares. He tapped several more keys. The screen clearly showed movement through a tunnel curving to the right for seven seconds and then pausing in view of a large, stark-white finned double cylinder smeared with brown fluid. "We're about to see what kind of 'gator lives in this sewer system." Then, in a blur, a white contrail formed as something zipped past. It went darker. The view repeated with greater distortion three times. The loop began again with the initial move through the tunnel. The three men watched the loop play twice more.

The masked man pointed. "Is that the pixel limit?"

House leaned forward. "No. It's off-axis." He punched a few more keys. The view magnified. There, in a part of the tunnel wall with even heavier distortion, something took shape. It was a hazy, wavy, picture of a tiny grid, nearly five by four. It disappeared each time the contrail did. House nodded. "I've super-sized it, but that's probably all we'll get." He limped to the recliner.

Wilson and the masked man looked at each other for a moment. "Okay?" said Wilson.

"Nanomachines," said the masked man, "What's next?"

"You take a record of this and find NORAD. We'll keep the lab. I'll trade you. You bring us any patients to cure and whatever other equipment we might need, and we'll keep it up for you. I would ask that you blindfold or gas them first. Our hideout."

"You could work on this," said the masked man.

"If you bring me the research. I don't know how to find it."

"I don't know anything about nanomachines."

House slouched in the recliner. "I know two things. First, a buckytube is not a seed pod from Ohio but an elementary nanostructure. I don't know how to make it, program it, or, more importantly, DE-program it. What we've seen here is apparently a rheostatic liquid. You magnetize it one certain pre-programmed way, and you get a grid-shaped nanorobotic halo gyro system capable of remarkably fast balance correction. Probably sends messages down the nerves the same way our own brains do. The difference here is that once the pathway is set, the nerve can decompose, which means there are signal stations too. Probably even smaller than what we've seen. While you're gone, I could try to get pictures of that, too. Surgically remove everything from the skull and spine except for one leg all the way to the little toe. Encourage the rot—"

"You said there were two things." The masked man was slowly walking toward House.

House startled. "Yeah! If you put in the wrong kill code, you might just start them assembling all the iron on the planet, killing us all in the strangest way possible. Or tearing apart all matter into molecular debris. Or maybe there's something worse. You do NOT want the wrong person messing with this. As it is we might be taking a chance not containing these and burning them immediately. When you find the pro tempore, your search won't be over. Likely that person will have authority and access, but no knowledge. The recording will let them know what needs to be done. I'm not saying I can't help you. I'm saying I SHOULDN'T help you till you bring me the kill code."

Wilson shook his head, "I've seen a movie with that molecular debris—thing. That's really possible?"

"I imagine it would only be able to take apart one element or compound. But the reason that nanomachines are dangerous is that you can't just turn them off or wait for the batteries to run out. They're probably powered by E. Coli mitochondria."

The masked man began pacing. "Of course if they have the kill code, they would have used it themselves."

"They may not know they have it. They might not know where it is. If you come back and bring me the original research, I'm more than willing to look at it. It sounds fascinating. When can you leave?"

The masked man startled. He pulled a Sharpie out of his toolbelt. He walked to the nearest wall, drew a circle, added a slash to turn it into a 'Q,' and then crossed the slash, making the slash into an 'X.' "Look for my symbol each morning. I'll make it as high and visible from here as I can. Under it will be a cache of whatever I can offer you. I'll check it again sometime in the next five nights. If it hasn't been touched, I'll check on you. Wilson? Leave the updated copies of your work at the same drop."

The masked man tossed Wilson a keyring. "The janitor's closet off the lobby has around a hundred MRE's in it. There's a rainwater and solar power system on the roof. Not enough for a Jacuzzi, but enough for one ten-minute hot shower every day. The drugstore's moved just down the hall. Stay alive."

He turned, leapt for the rope hanging from the ceiling, and went hand over hand out of sight.

Wilson called, "Does this have the key to get out?" He pointed at the locked door to the lab.

The panel was almost in place as the masked man called down, "The pass-through is removable. Push it sideways." The panel snapped into place.

Wilson looked at House. "Was it removable the whole time?" He started straight for it. House stopped him. "What?"

"He'll be expecting us to chase him. Get up to the roof and watch him leave. Then come on back down."

Ten minutes later, Wilson came back to the lab. "He left our lookout perch exactly as it was. He has a really odd—thing. He drives an odd—conveyance. What he drives is weird. I saw him get out at the intersection with the highway and pull something out of a wrecked car. He's gone. What have you been doing? Why is EVERYTHING on?"

House waved dismissively at the four charred bodies under a vent hood. "Cleaning up a bit and making sure he's not listening in. Come here, you'll only get one chance to see this." He limped over to the isolette in the corner. "He might be mad at us if he ever succeeds, and I want to show you why. By the way, this keepsake—" He shook the old medicine bottle. "Will normally be in my pockets. If anything happens to me, put it in and take it out of this Faraday cage—" He put it in. It was a live animal trap with six kinds of wire laced through it. "Several times around sunrise and sunset. It should act like an S-O-S if he happens to be nearby. Hand me that pill reminder box."

"He's got you more careful about overdosing?"

"No, I'm about to show you why the pro tempore won't be any help."

 _ **Oh, boy! What does House know that the masked man doesn't? Stay tuned; please read and review.**_


	18. De-Noue-Macho, And Where Is He From?

_**Questions have naturally arisen about the gem-based carousel-style videonanograph equipment, the 'gyro' the nanoevidence was found in, and the evidence itself. For anyone who wants to research these subjects, the reason for the incredibly expensive and arcane workaround is the reality of distortion. Lenses can only be so good. There are constants to be found in physics textbooks for calculations and tables that explain the higher limits of lens-based magnification. The 'gyro' is not a true gyro at all, of course, but a radial pattern of motion that might be used to detect 'tilt.' It might be allowed for at the speed of light, like any neural reflex pattern in a living person.**_

 _ **As an interesting note, rheostatic liquids have been discovered recently. It IS possible with modern technology to create liquids that, if you magnetize them correctly, will arrange into basic grids. Obviously we are not PUBLICLY so advanced as to reanimate ourselves just yet.**_

De-noue-macho, And Where Is He From?

House held out his hand, and Wilson handed him the weekly pill sorter. It was a septagonal, translucent plastic box with a lid labeled with a letter for each day. "Was his vehicle silver?"

"No, black."

House rolled his eyes. "THAT reference you miss? Did he say 'hiyo' to it?"

"Oh."

House shook his head. "You're slipping, Wilson." He spun the pill sorter on a finger. "Anywho, to work. Some calendars begin on Sunday, and some on Monday."

"What, do European calendars still begin on Monday? I mean, did they?"

"I've owned a few tasty ones."

Wilson grimaced at him. "I assume you mean tasteless ones."

"Po-tay-toe, po-taught-oe. We're beginning this calendar on Thursday."

"Do I want to know why?"

"If you like. Put your hands in there and open the vial labeled 'Thursday.' Careful of the others. I chose Thursday because of the 'T' for Triassic. It's also the only way Miocene lined up with Monday."

Wilson shook his head and put his hands in the manipulator gloves to handle the vials laid out in the sterile isolette. He opened the vial for Thursday. House set a kitchen timer for two minutes. "One syringe, injected into the torso, please." As Wilson injected the solution into the dead baby's torso, House started the timer.

"You knew it was nanomachines," accused Wilson.

"I figured it out. During my overdose. You pointed out I wasn't acting like myself. The idea of the supernatural had infected my brain like a germ. I realized that the germs weren't acting like themselves, so they must have caught something. Centrifuge next." He led Wilson over to the centrifuge.

Wilson frowned and paused. "You're saying you realized the bug had a bug. That actually makes sense. What are we doing here?"

"The Thursday over here gets precisely fifteen milliliters into the prep tube with the sample. Then we go back to the isolette. Wait for the chime, and then we do 'Friday.' That's the Cretaceous." House stared studiously at the dead baby inside the isolette.

"Alright. I guess Saturday is the Pleistocene?" Wilson began preparing the syringe.

"I don't remember. Somewhere around ninety-five to a hundred million years."

"I don't remember either. What's Sunday?"

"Fifty-five to eighty million years."

"I remember seventy million being dinosaurs."

"Some of them, yes. The last big ones, I think."

"You said Miocene for Monday? What was the Miocene period?"

"About forty million years ago. Interesting bug and plant life. I decided to include forward to thirty-three million years ago for convenience."

"Okay. We're playing fast and loose with geological time. What's on Tuesday?" Wilson put his eyes back on the timer.

"That's a grouping around twenty-three to eighteen million years ago. Don't remember the name of the period if there was one. It wasn't included in what he brought us."

Wilson glanced at the other vials and began counting.

House smiled. "You're noticing there are twelve Wednesdays. That took the most time to prepare." He held a clipboard up for Wilson to glance at, then read it to him. "Eastern hemisphere, forty-five to fifty thousand years ago is Wednesday, six a.m. Seven a.m. is forty-seven to fifty thousand years ago in the Western hemisphere."

The chime sounded. Wilson injected the Friday syringe into the dead baby's torso. House set the timer again. Wilson prepared the Saturday syringe and trotted to the centrifuge to finish Friday as House continued speaking. "We jump to ten a.m. with twenty-five thousand years ago, noon was twenty thousand, one p.m. was eighteen thousand years, two p.m. was fourteen thousand years ago, six p.m. was . . ." House droned on till the next chime sounded. Wilson continued the routine, but frowned. "So, what are all these solutions?"

"They're different samples of E. Coli and E. Coli ancestors. Before Saturday, E. Coli weren't necessarily recognizable. Those samples may have been a different species, but related. By the way, decomp rate for a human being IS slower, just like you thought. I didn't have the leisure to chart it until these last few days. I don't remember what it was before, but I'm sure it takes at least half again as long."

"So what does that mean, the E. Coli aren't as fast? They're overloaded with nanomachines?"

"No. Their power is partially drained. It's being pirated."

"Ah. So they're stealing energy. From the mitochondria?"

"That's it. Now of the ambrite, burmite, firmiss, resinite, rumenite, and simitite, most of the samples were fine. I had to ditch all the black amber he brought. He didn't read too closely. It's not the same stuff. He's no geologist. At least he didn't bring me any whale-made."

Wilson scrunched up his face. "Whale-made?"

"Ambergris. Amber was the term used for the plant AND the whale stuff."

"Ah. So, what are you doing? Trying to figure out a replacement strain of E. Coli?"

"That WOULD be an interesting project, but not very practical. Even if we put every infant in an isolette and gut-trained them with other stuff, the nanos would work their way in when they came out. Some E. Coli are airborne. Survives just fine without us. As it is, I couldn't be working on that without regularizing my data. I never asked him for a tandem van de Graaf accelerator for carbon dating more than fifty thousand years ago. And that would still only work on the dead stuff.

The rest of it I was able to compare with a process called glass transition. Not something I'm so familiar with, but it seems to work pretty well. Just uses a lot of heat and battery power."

"That's what you've been doing with the forge instead of making jewelry? Burning the amber?"

"I had to be sure how old it was. He knew about some of it. He thought that was what I used for the yellow stones in the microscope. That was topaz, by the way. Hard to find good topaz. The light diffraction was close enough.

Anyway, I figured out the signal problem."

"What signal problem?"

"Apparently the electrochemical signals involving eating are very similar between germs feeding and humans feeding. The signals being sent through the nano network to the E. Coli and the vivisected human brain are all about eating. That's why the dead bite. You must have wondered about that."

Wilson frowned. "I . . . did."

"Why a bite? It's not the bite. It's the combination of signals in the brain. We're lucky. If the signal activated for the dead grabbing for us, all they'd have to do is wave in our direction enough times and we'd turn. They have to wait for us to die. You know they don't actually digest any of what they eat. The bite just spreads whatever disease is convenient to kill us. We all already have the nanos inside us—they're inside the E. Coli! The dead bite anything that has living mitochondria. The nanos have to get their power from somewhere. Only people turn. I don't know how they sense the living mitochondria except by vibration frequencies carried to them through the air like radar. It's like hearing, but it's really just sensed motion of a producer of energy. Flux. Acceleration of energy, rather than mass. That's why fire draws them from a distance. Plasma is more or less just hyperaccelerated matter, a high-energy form. For the nanos, active plasma becomes indistinguishable from sound waves or motion stirring the air somewhere between arm's length and twenty feet. That's why they flock in circles—they're sensing breeze patterns."

The chime sounded. Wilson injected Saturday into the infant torso and prepped Sunday. He moved to the centrifuge to inject Saturday. He looked up. Wilson shrugged. "I give up, House. Why are we doing this?" House pointed at the isolette. Wilson turned and startled. The baby was moving.

Several minutes later, gasping for breath over a trashcan, Wilson shook himself. The mummified baby had been surprisingly sturdy. After decapitation, House had stabbed the baby's head four times to put it down. "So, what was that? In that syringe? Saturday?"

"Half denatured mitochondria and half diced E. Coli from amber samples from ninety to a hundred million years ago."

"That's not possible. Those E. Coli were dead."

"But perfectly preserved. So that means—"

"I don't get it. Why didn't—" Wilson straightened. "Wait—no that means . . ."

"That means that those rumors on the news about Operation Wildfire were a little misleading."

"A little WHAT?!"

"America has supposedly not been researching germ warfare for a fairly long time. E. Coli just piggybacked the nanos. The thing is, we might have triggered this working with E. Coli for a peacetime purpose. The masked man won't be able to provide the original research on the nanos, because it happened too long ago."

"Ninety million YEARS ago?!"

"Give or take. The nanos were seeded into the E. Coli somehow within twenty million years of the species formation. Then at some point recently, a signal went off. We've been doing research with E. Coli for a long time. This is the first time anything like THIS has happened, though. Most likely the signal consisted of an identifier of our DNA. It turned on this mode of action. They started building their nano army, and everywhere E. Coli were that hadn't been centrifuged or stored in amber or immersion oil or—well, some other thing—the nanos started turning every dead human they found. Or caused. Obviously whoever did this has living mitochondria too. Or something indistinguishable from them."

Wilson sat down on the floor a bit heavily.

"I've been thinking about the versatility and durability of the control system. The HUGE amount of pressure and electromagnetism it could come back from? That sounds to me like it was originally designed for something else. Like maybe life on a world with higher gravity. That would make more sense, actually. Someplace with a lot of humidity. Electrifying aerosolized water might carry more charge. Magnify it. Maybe halfway to a gas giant as an environment?" House nodded. He got up. He injected the rest of the samples into the correct pre-labeled centrifuge vials and started it up. "Later on, I'm gonna figure out if the specific gravity of the cells changed over time, or if the nanos just floated around not reproducing till now. Well, I'm all done here till after dinner. I'm gonna go get a shower and change clothes. Never thought how much I'd miss pockets." He pulled the keepsake medicine bottle out of the Faraday cage, limped over to the passthrough, as Wilson had left it ajar, stooped, and exited.

Wilson blinked. "Hou-ouse?" He stayed there for a bit, pale and shaken.

HHHHHHHH

Ann Gee's bosom rippled as she slowly stopped laughing. It had been an eventful shower with House, who had obviously missed her. Then he'd proudly told her about scamming Wilson with the ancient astronaut idea as they lingered, wrapped in an absurd number of towels on the queen-sized mattress. "Okay, I'm glad I missed the dead baby, but the look on Wilson's face must have been classic! So tell me what it all really means."

House's face went deadpan. "It COULD still be true. There's just no way to ever be sure. We're doing post-modern science with semi-medieval theft of formerly modern means with my memory and ingenuity. There are plenty of things I don't remember. The nanos can go anywhere, being submicroscopic, but places like deep inside amber. They were already in the isolette. Without the presence of nano-infected E. Coli AND human DNA, the reanimation doesn't occur. Obviously I couldn't keep them out without a fully sterile environment. It probably just got into the samples despite my best efforts. I had a feeling it would.

I CAN tell you that this is way past any published nanotechnology I've ever read about. Everything I told Quixote about messing with nanotech is true. Without the original plans for the stuff, we'd be stupid to ever mess with it. And that's assuming we'd ever figure out how to in the first place."

"So it could've been aliens?" Ann Gee shook her head.

"No idea," said House, "They're too small to check for a LOGO. There's no way to look for a manufacturer's date. Without speaking to whoever worked on it, if there WAS a human being who worked on it, we'll never know."

"Come on. You know SOMETHING." Ann Gee goosed him.

"We know it happened within the last hundred million years, barring an alien race already having E. Coli in their spaceship to seed Earth with. We know someone designed the nanotech to not move into this mode of action unless it was prompted. It must have been around long enough to spread throughout Earth before the outbreak, so—a minimum of a month allowing for air currents, water currents, soil seepage, what have you. Even if it happened before modern technology, that doesn't mean it was DEFINITELY aliens."

Ann Gee looked at him sideways. She raised an eyebrow.

"No, really! People can have ideas at any time, and it's not a crime to keep them secret. Sometimes people make advances, innovations, and the secrets die with them. Ancient astronauts could have come, but human beings might have been here and been nihilists."

Ann Gee looked blank. "Is that the guys that go around saying 'the end is nigh?' 'Cause they seem not so bright to me."

House blinked, then smiled lazily. "No, that's a different thing. Nihilism is when you want to destroy everything."

"What about the fossil record?"

"People act like the fossil record is a library. If it were, there wouldn't be missing shelves. You've heard of the missing link?"

"Yeah."

"In reality there's not A missing link. There's whole missing tons worth of chain! It wouldn't be that hard to erase all existence of humanity from the fossil record. It wouldn't even take very long. We could be humans mark SIX and never be the wiser. If the nanos were planted as a fail-safe, then we were just determined.

The signal to start reanimation could have been in any electrically recognizable form and come from anywhere on world or off. We could've done something in a lab that set it off automatically. There was a 'B' movie made once called 'Plan 9 From Outer Space.' This is essentially that. An ordinary radio signal could in theory have been picked up by nanotech receivers hidden in plain sight. Piggybacking on our own technology. Using our own antenna."

"You think it was aliens."

"Who would want to kill all people and leave some of the plants and animals? Klaatu?"

"Who?"

"'The Day The Earth Stood Still.' Good movie."

"Wasn't there a Bond film with the same idea?"

"Not exactly. This wouldn't have worked for spacefaring humans wanting to return to Earth unless the kill code was broadcast for long enough first. That film was only interesting for the minor villain coming around. I'm gonna go fiddle with the plumbing. Shower was eleven minutes plus. I'm wondering if I can get it to fifteen." House dressed quickly and limped out, whistling.

Ann Gee, not for the first time, wondered at House. He would have the sense to know she had been with 'Quixote' and Wilson, but would never bring it up to her. He cared too much about having sex to spend time on arguing like most guys would. Come to think of it, he had that in common with 'Quixote'—

How had he put it? He was "no longer the same person, so Quixote is as good a name as any." He had thanked her for seducing him and given her the relic of his former identity with the understanding that she would keep it hidden. He'd sewn it into the bottom of her go-bag on their last night together in such a way it wouldn't poke anything. The relic, the skill of its placement, and part of its function were as impressive as he was, symbolic of his ability to do violence when necessary, to protect when important, and to return someday. He'd shown her just once that it tended to loop around toward the thrower if it connected with nothing. She reached into her go-bag for a moment, fingering the relic hidden in the bottom seam, then got up, stretching like a cat. She got dressed, remembering the cool, sleek points and matte-black surface of the Bat-arang, and smiled dreamily.

 _ **Congratulations to 'niph,' as he was the only one to guess Quixote's former identity. He also guessed MacGyver, which partly fit with the new tactics. This is to be considered an alternate reality Batman where he was the only 'real' comic book character and where the plot didn't have it all start in Gotham, where no doubt, he would have stopped it before it was too late.**_

 _ **I've long understood, though many don't seem to, that people don't always publish their findings, that people sometimes surge past what their current level of technology dictates, and that anyone can have an idea at any time.**_

 _ **The ancient astronaut 'prank' would appeal to House, as he's been under the thumb of someone he didn't dare act against for way too long. He would have no way of knowing for certain whether he actually messed up sample sterility or not, with only one shot. That doubt would have to persist under the conditions the experiment was under. House's clouded memories, educated guesses, and calculations about E. Coli's ancestry are only a little bit off, as scientists mostly agree E. Coli emerged as its own species about 102 million years ago. Various strains have diverged and specialized ever since, the most recent divergence having been about 30 million years ago.**_

 _ **This has been a strange project for me. I don't normally write profanity, include implicit sex, or do crossovers. Fanfic feels new to me still, as normally I stick to writing my own fiction and occasionally contributing my side to Hairy's blog at .com. Thank you all for reading. Thanks especially to my reviewers and contacts for the encouragement and relevant contributions. Thank you to Sunni D for reminding me that hobby time is a requirement for continued sanity.**_


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